Translated material
The State Duma will be amended, canceling criminal punishment for repeated violations at rallies
The State Duma proposed to exclude Article 212.1 from the Criminal Code, which provides for criminal punishment for repeated violations of the organization or holding a rally. According to TASS, the corresponding bill was developed by deputies of the LDPR faction Igor Lebedev, Yaroslav Nilov, Sergey Ivanov and Andrey Svintsov.
According to the authors of the amendments, "a formal basis for sentencing under Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code is only the fact of repeated violation of the provisions of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, regardless of who, by whom, participant or organizer of the public event, these violations were committed."
"It is obvious that the wording of Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code provides for the criminal liability of a person who has already bear liability in the manner prescribed by the Code of Administrative Offenses. Article 50 of the Constitution contains a ban on re -punishment for one misconduct:" No one can be repeatedly convicted of the same crime, "the authors of the amendments emphasized.
According to the deputies, "the authors of the bill on the introduction of Article 212.1 in the Criminal Code during its introduction pursued only one goal: the establishment of criminal liability to prevent repeated violations of the law during public events."
"However, the severity of the offense and the obvious rigidity and disproportion of punishment by the level of gravity of the misconduct was not taken into account. As a result, the moral and political costs of making such a decision were unacceptably high for society as a whole and specific citizens in particular," the developers say.
At the same time, as a precedent, they refer to the case of Ildar Dadin, who became the first sentenced to deprivation of liberty under Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code.
On January 24, the Constitutional Court held a meeting to consider Dadin's complaint about Article 212.1. The KS examined the complaint without the participation of the Politsek, since, according to the head of the court Valery Zorkin, Dadin disputed the article itself, and not a specific case of its application to him. The court also decided not to attract the Politzek to participate in the hearings on the video, since "the hall for this is not adapted."
The representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office Tatyana Vasilieva at the meeting of the KS said that the supervisory authority really has claims to the wording of Article 212.1. However, she emphasized that in general, the article does not contradict the law. "I have identified problems, but I do not consider the article an anti -constitution," Vasilieva curled up.
The meeting was performed by representatives of the president in the Constitutional Court of Mikhail Krotov, the government - Mikhail Barschevsky, the Ministry of Justice - Marina Melnikova. All of them also announced the constitutionality of the “rally” article, although they indicated the need to clarify some provisions.
The representative of the Commissioner for Human Rights Ivan Soloviev noted that "the danger of the personality of the subject with each new violation increases." Referring to the opinion of unnamed experts, he also called the article of the relevant constitution.
At the same time, the interests of Dadin Sergey Golubok called Solovyov’s words “a knife in the back of human rights”. The lawyer emphasized that the report of the previous Ombudsman was the exact opposite point of view - that Article 212.1 is unconstitutional. Golubka noted that socially dangerous acts at rallies describes an article by the Criminal Code on riots, and Article 212.1 criminals only the participation itself.
Earlier, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Malinovsky, in response to a request from the KS , emphasized that "the repeated committing of offenses cannot be considered as a circumstance that increases the degree of danger of such actions to the level characteristic of crimes." In his opinion, the act that has been committed is unlikely "becomes so socially dangerous as to be recognized as a crime."
On December 7, 2015, the judge of the Basmanny District Court of Moscow Natalia Dudar sentenced Dadina under Article 212.1 to three years of general regime ( 
This is the first and, as far as is known, the only verdict on the “rally” article included in the Criminal Code in 2014.