The case against a participant in the rally in support of the “prisoners of Bolotnaya” was dropped

As Mediazona reports with reference to lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov, the Petrogradsky District Court of St. Petersburg has completely discontinued the proceedings in the case of Spanish teacher Ekaterina Bogach, who was previously found guilty of participating in an unauthorized rally on the day the verdict was announced for the accused in the Bolotnaya case.

According to Cherkasov, the court justified its decision by the fact that the administrative protocol against Bogach was drawn up with procedural violations, which are currently impossible to eliminate.

Ekaterina Bogach was detained on February 24, 2014 on Malaya Sadovaya Street in St. Petersburg. On that day, the verdict was announced in Moscow against the eight defendants in the Bolotnaya case, and people came out to discuss this event, Cherkasov said. On the Malaya Sadovaya pedestrian street, police detained at least 62 people.

On July 16, 2014, the Petrogradsky District Court imposed the maximum possible fine under this article of the Code of Administrative Offenses on Bogach as punishment for participating in an unauthorized rally—twenty thousand rubles. Bogach, with the help of human rights activist Dinar Idrisov, appealed this decision, and a month later the St. Petersburg City Court overturned the district court's verdict due to violations in the preparation of the protocol. The case was sent for a new trial to the Petrograd Court, which terminated the proceedings.