Court in Kazan for blocking "Grani"

On June 20 at 14:30 Novo-Savinovsky District Court of Kazan will consider the first claim of a reader challenging the blocking of the Grani.Ru website.

Bulat Mukhamedzhanov, a resident of Kazan, claims that the decisions of Roskomnadzor and the Prosecutor General's Office to block "Grani" limit his right to freely receive information. As the applicant points out, this right is guaranteed by Article 8 of the Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection", Article 29 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Article 11 of the CIS Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Mukhamedzhanov tried to access one of Graney's publications in May of this year and found that access to the resource was "restricted in accordance with the requirements of the law." He sent a request to the editorial office and received a written response on the situation with the blocking, which was accompanied by copies of the request of the Prosecutor General's Office and the notification of Roskomnadzor. After that, Mukhamedzhanov applied to the court in accordance with Chapter 25 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The complainant points out that blocking the entire site without specifying specific pages with illegal materials violates Russian law. Mukhamedzhanov in his lawsuit also refers to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which took the side of the applicant whenever the state "applied unreasonably harsh and inappropriate to the degree of possible harm" measures to restrict access to information.

Grani has been blocked since March 13, along with the websites EJ.ru, Kasparov.Ru and the blog of Alexei Navalny. The Prosecutor General's Office claims that these sites contain calls for participation in illegal actions.

On June 9, the leader of the Pirate Party of Russia, Pavel Rassudov, tried to challenge this decision. He also argued that the blocking violated his constitutional rights to free access to information, and also prevented him from working as a journalist. Judge of the Tverskoy court Ilmira Mustafina dismissed Rassudov's claim.

On April 11, the Lublin court recognized the blocking of Navalny's blog as legal, but decided not to indicate calls for mass riots and extremism as reasons, leaving only calls for uncoordinated actions in the explanations. On May 6 , the Tagansky court dismissed the claim of Graney . On June 2, the Moscow Arbitration Court refused to consider the claim of Ezhednevny Zhurnal , stating that the issue did not relate to the sphere of economics and entrepreneurship.