The European Court of Human Rights communicated the collective complaints of those detained at the Zamoskvoretsky court building on the day of the verdict in the Bolotnaya case on February 24, 2014 and on the protests against the war in Ukraine on March 2, 2014. According to documents published on the court's website, both complaints were communicated on September 23. This means that the ECHR did not consider these complaints inadmissible and will forward questions related to them to the Russian authorities.
Both complaints involve violations of the rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and, in cases where the period of detention exceeded the three hours established by law, also the rights to liberty and security of person.
Of the more than two hundred people detained at the Zamoskvoretsky court on the day of the verdict in the Bolotnaya case, twelve people appealed to the ECHR as part of a collective complaint: Sergei Swarovsky, Zoya Andreeva, Oleg Orlov, Matvey Chepaitis, Mikhail Garder, Anna Glukhova, Veronika Kiryanova, Maria Kokovkina, Karina Kotova, Dmitry Nesterov, Dmitry Vinogradov and Tarya Polyakova.
The applicants of the second complaint were 14 people detained on March 2 at protests against the introduction of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine: Marina Zavyalova, Maria Kotova, Daria Vyatkina, Sergei Akhunov, Ivan Babitsky, Igor Filyushkin, Alexey Kulikov, Alexey Torgashev, Daria Shtyrkova, Anton Lubny, Lev Pokrovsky, Anton Kuznetsov, Ivan Divilkovsky and Ksenia Mitrokhina.
All applicants were found guilty of violating the procedure for holding a public event (under Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences) and were fined from five to fifteen thousand rubles. In some cases, they were also accused of disobeying a lawful order of a police officer (under Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code).
Both complaints were prepared within the framework of a coalition project of the Memorial human rights center, the Public Verdict Foundation, ANO YURIX and OVD-Info . the communication of complaints : commented on Memorial's senior lawyer Kirill Koroteev
The world was falling apart before our eyes, nights without sleep, work without days off. It was a great collective effort, joint actions of dozens of detainees, lawyers and non-lawyers of NGOs, volunteers, lawyers... I am very glad to be part of these efforts and to see today’s result
Earlier, in July 2016, the ECHR communicated a collective complaint prepared within the framework of the same project by those detained at the Zamoskvoretsky court building on the first day of the verdict in the Bolotnaya case - February 21, 2014.