Such a week. Issue No. 4

This week in Moscow a second verdict was handed down in the “March 26 Case” - carpenter from Lyubertsy Alexander Shpakov was given a year and a half of imprisonment in a general regime colony. Shpakov was accused of using violence against a police officer, although he himself was beaten during his arrest, and the “victim” employee of the Russian Guard asked not to deprive Shpakov of his freedom. Shpakov is in the care of a disabled mother and a daughter, who paid for her studies at the journalism department thanks to her father. Shpakov's family complained that the appointed lawyer extorted money for any information about him.

During the investigation, Shpakov, like other defendants in the “March 26 Case,” was persuaded to agree to a special procedure for considering the case, that is, without examining evidence and speaking witnesses in court, but the punishment ultimately cannot exceed ⅔ of the maximum term under the article. The accused Stanislav Zimovets, who had previously agreed to a special order after strong pressure,refused it.

It became known about one more person involved in the March 26 Case. His name is Dmitry Krepkin, he is accused of hitting a police officer in the leg. Krepkin was detained on May 14, he was detained until mid-July. Krepkin claims that he did not hit the policeman’s leg, but rather the police baton. Here you can find out more about the new accused.

After March 26, criminal cases were opened not only in Moscow - in Volgograd, a courtsentenced student Maxim Beldinov to a suspended sentence of one and a half years in prison. He, like Muscovites, was accused of using violence not dangerous to the life and health of a policeman. Beldinov wrote a confession.

Strikes by truckers have begun again against the Platon system, which charges heavy trucks for using federal roads. On Sunday, 12 truck drivers were detained in Khimki; the total amount of fines for “offences” amounted to 104,000 rubles.

And on Friday, soldiers of the Russian Guard, armed with machine guns, detained 23 truck drivers at the 51st kilometer of the Moscow Ring Road, some were pulled out directly from the cab of the car. During the arrest, the police took posters from the truckers' cars and hung them on the cars to record in the photo that the drivers were holding a rally. The two detained women were held at the police station without records for more than a day. One of them is pregnant. After the intervention of human rights activists, they were released and ordered to appear in court.

And the saddest news is that the editor-in-chief of the Ton-M newspaper, which was investigating corruption in the region, was killed in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The body of Dmitry Popkov with gunshot wounds was found in a bathhouse in the courtyard of a private house. According to one version of the regional Investigative Committee, the cause of the murder could have been his professional activities. “Our newspaper has long been accustomed to the fact that many officials consider us a bone in their throats and try to silence us with all sorts of methods. So far, no one has succeeded, including the prosecutor, beloved by the townspeople. We didn’t give a damn about telephone threats, intimidation with searches and interrogations,” wrote the Ton-M publication in 2016.

Such a week.

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