In the case of Taisiya Osipova, the decision of the ECHR has surfaced

The Smolensk Regional Court today withdrew from consideration the cassation appeal of the Other Russia activist Taisiya Osipova against the verdict. A new consideration of the cassation appeal against the verdict of Taisiya Osipova in the Smolensk Regional Court will take place no earlier than in three weeks. This is exactly the amount of time the Zadneprovsky Court will need to send to participants in the process the decision of the ECHR , which in early October noted that “controlled drug purchases without other evidence of drug sales cannot serve as a basis for criminal prosecution of a person for drug sales.”

The materials of Osipova’s case were returned to the lower court, as it turned out that not all participants in the process had read the additions to the lawyers’ complaint. In this regard, the prosecutor opposed the consideration of the complaint on Wednesday.

Osipova's lawyers Svetlana Sidorkina and Natalya Shaposhnikova insisted that the court consider the cassation appeal today, noting that the addition to the complaint simply presented further arguments. Taisiya Osipova joined the opinion of the lawyers. However, the judge sided with the prosecutor.

Sergey Fomchenkov, husband of Taisiya Osipova:
“When Taisiya’s lawyers filed a cassation appeal with the Regional Court in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights considered the complaint “Veselov and others v. Russia” and ruled in favor of Veselov. This case confirms that the control purchase of drugs that took place in the Veselov case is an illegal provocation. In the case of Taisiya Osipova, there was also allegedly a control purchase, so this decision was important to attach to the consideration of the cassation appeal. Taisiya’s lawyers translated this decision and added it to the cassation appeal.”

Svetlana Sidorkina, a lawyer at the Interregional Human Rights Organization "Agora", defends Osipova:
“I would like to note, so that people do not get confused in the wording, our cassation appeal was not rejected, it was temporarily withdrawn from consideration. The fact is that we attached to our complaint a translation of the ECHR decision in the Veselov case, which is similar to the Osipova case. But the parties were not notified about this, and by law all parties are required to receive all documents related to the case. And since the distribution of documents is not within the competence of the Regional Court, this is the competence of the district court, so for now the case was returned to the Zadneprovsky court so that it could be sent out, and then the case will return to the Regional Court. All in all, this will take two to three weeks.”