Translated material
Lawyers ask to stop the prosecution of Maxim Efimov
On September 17, 2012, appeals from lawyers Ramil Akhmetgaliev ("Agora") and Olga Rybalova were sent to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation and the Investigation Department of Petrozavodsk of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for Karelia. Lawyers are asking the Prosecutor General's Office to refuse the Investigative Committee's request to extradite from Estonia the chairman of the Youth Human Rights Group of Karelia (IPG Karelia) Maxim Yefimov. A petition was sent to the Investigative Committee with a request to stop the criminal prosecution of Efimov under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred or hostility, as well as humiliation of human dignity on the basis of attitude to religion) due to the absence of corpus delicti.
The appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office states that no preventive measure against Efimov was chosen, and the Investigative Department of the Petrozavodsk Investigative Committee for Karelia stated that the chairman of the MPG of Karelia was unreasonably put on the wanted list. There are no grounds for sending a request for the extradition of Yefimov from Estonia and, in general, for the criminal prosecution of Yefimov.
In their appeal to the UK, the lawyers refer to an independent linguistic study conducted by a professor at the Nizhny Novgorod State University. Lobachevsky Timur Radbil. The author of the study came to the conclusion that the note " Karelia is tired of priests " does not contain calls for illegal actions, and only the religious organization and its employees are the object of criticism in the text, and recalled the decision of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. 11 "On judicial practice in Criminal Cases on Crimes of an Extremist Direction”, according to which criticism of religious associations in itself should not be considered as an act aimed at inciting hatred or enmity.
Recall that Yefimov has been in Estonia since the second half of May. He explains his departure by the fact that he cannot count on the fairness and impartiality of the consideration of the criminal case initiated against him.
A criminal case against the chairman of the MPG of Karelia was initiated in April 2012 under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity on the basis of attitude to religion).
We repeat again: we believe that the case against Efimov was initiated unlawfully. The conclusions of the independent study generally echo our argument .
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