The Supreme Court does not object to the confiscation of electronic devices for displaying extremist symbols

The Supreme Court approved the rulings of the lower courts in the case of a resident of Krasnodar, brought to justice under Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. According to statistics, in 2015 every seventh person punished under this article lost an electronic device.

May 30, 2016 became It is known that on March 11, 2016, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation approved the decision Prikubansky District Court of Krasnodar and Krasnodar Regional Court, which sentenced a resident of Krasnodar S. Pokrovsky to a fine of one and a half thousand rubles with confiscation of the computer under Part 1 of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for publishing on a page in social network "VKontakte" images with Nazi symbols.

The corresponding decision of the Supreme Court has been published on the Rossiyskaya Gazeta website. Pokrovsky tried to challenge the decision previous instances on the grounds that the court was not properly proved his guilt, and in addition indicated that he had actually been brought to trial twice liability for the same act. He also appealed against the confiscation of the computer, claiming that it was owned by another person. However, the SC considered that Pokrovsky's arguments in favor of reassessing the evidence "do not refute the established circumstances and do not affect the legality of the case", and the fact that he posted images with Nazi symbols on two different pages on VKontakte may be treated as two separate offences. Concerning the computer, the court came to the conclusion that belonging to another person in the complaint is not proven. Proportionality such severe additional punishment as confiscation of a computer in case of an offense, which is punishable by a small fine, is not called into question in the decision of the Supreme Court.

In the article accompanying the publication decision of the Supreme Court on the website of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, an important statistics of the Judicial Department under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. In 2015 for public demonstration of prohibited symbols under Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, 1183 people were punished (two and a half times more than a year earlier), every seventh of those attracted has lost a computer or other electronic device (laptop, tablet, mobile phone) from which the publication of prohibited symbols on the Internet was made. In 2015 confiscation was applied 169 times, and in 2014 458 were punished under this article people, confiscation was appointed 65 times.

Sources

• Vladislav Kulikov. Removed from the web // Russian newspaper. May 30, 2016