Religious scholar arrested for seven days for VKontakte pictures

On December 28, 2015, the Kazan Islamic scholar Rais Suleimanov was interviewed at the Center for Combating Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic of Tatarstan, after which he was summoned to the police to draw up an administrative protocol under part 1 of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (public demonstration of paraphernalia of extremist organizations).

him On December 30, the Privolzhsky District Court of Kazan sentenced to seven days of administrative arrest. The claims of law enforcement agencies were caused by photographs with the flags of the "Islamic State" and "Hizb ut-Tahrir", which accompany the reposts of records posted on the page of the Islamic scholar "VKontakte" with links to interviews with the scientist and articles with his comments.

Also during the survey, the police asked to explain the content of the interview about the "Islamic State", which was published in Ukrainian and a link to which is also present on the scientist's page. The results of the verification of the publication are not reported.

In September 2013, Suleimanov was already becoming the object of attention of law enforcement agencies. Then the prosecutor's office of Tatarstan warned him against extremist activity in connection with his publication about the closure of the Al-Ikhlas mosque in Kazan and the growing number of radical Islamists in the republic.

upd (January 11, 2016, 18:24): According to Business Online , on December 31, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan replaced Suleimanov's seven days of arrest with a fine of one and a half thousand rubles. Thus, the scientist spent a day in a cell, but after the decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic, he was released.