A bill has been submitted to the State Duma to repeal the article on rallies under which Ildar Dadin was convicted

A draft law on the exclusion from the Criminal Code (CC) of the Russian Federation of an article on punishment for “repeated violation of the established procedure for organizing or holding a public event” (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code) has been submitted to the State Duma for consideration by the lower house. The initiative is reported on the website of the LDPR party.

“The erroneousness, haste, insufficient practical and theoretical justification for the introduction of such articles with administrative prejudice into the criminal law were fully manifested when the courts considered several cases. The public outcry of the imposition of a criminal sentence on Ildar Dadid is largely due to the injustice of the punishment, which is disproportionate to the public danger of the misconduct,” the LDPR said in a statement.

On January 24, the Constitutional Court considered a complaint against Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code (repeated violation of the procedure for holding mass events). The complaint was filed by Ildar Dadin, the first and only person convicted under this article in Russia, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

Earlier, Kommersant published a negative review of Article 212.2 of the Criminal Code, which was given by the Prosecutor General's Office and experts from the Far Eastern University (FEFU). In the conclusion of the Far Eastern Federal University, it was noted that the criminalization of repeated violation of the established procedure for organizing or holding a meeting, a rally is unreasonable, since there are no two most important criteria for criminalization - a necessary and sufficiently high degree of public danger of an act and causing harm to public relations protected by law.

Plenipotentiary representative of the President of Russia in the Constitutional Court, Mikhail Krotov , said that Dadin's complaint could not be satisfied: "The repetition of illegal actions testifies to the antisocial motives of the individual."

Adviser to the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Maria Melnikova, presenting the position of the Ministry of Justice at a meeting in the Constitutional Court, said that Article 212.2 of the Criminal Code complies with the Constitution, but needs to be improved. According to her, the norm allows for uncertainty of interpretation, in particular, when counting the number of offenses committed by a particular citizen at public events, as well as the timing of their commission.

Ildar Dadin is the first and only person convicted in Russia for repeated violations of the law on rallies.

On December 7, 2015, Ildar Dadin was sentenced by the Basmanny Court to three years in prison. Subsequently, the Moscow City Court reduced the term of imprisonment to two and a half years.

In November, Dadin's letter was published , in which he talked about torture and humiliation in IK-7 in Karelia, where he was serving his sentence.

In early December 2016, it became known that Dadin had been transferred to an "unknown destination", and until January 7, neither the lawyers nor the relatives of the convict knew where he was. Now Dadin is serving his sentence in IK-5 of the Altai Territory.