Crossing the rat line

The court arrested until September 18 the chairman of the branch of the Yabloko Party in the Toropets of the Tver Region Vladimir Egorov, who fled to Ukraine and extended from there in June. Thiswas reported by "Mediazona" with reference to the lawyer of the opposition Svetlana Sidorkin.

According to Sidorkina, now the activist is in the temporary detention center of the Toropets.

Egorov is charged with article 205.2 of the Criminal Code (calls for terrorism). He refused to testify and did not admit guilt.

Sidorkina did not specify, in connection with which they opened the case against the “terrorist” article against the activist whether this is the second criminal case against him or is it about retraining.

Initially, Egorov was a suspect under part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code (calls for extremism via the Internet, up to five years in a colony). As reported by Radio Liberty, the case against the activist was opened back in October 2016. Then the opposition was a search in the house of the opposition.

The reason for the opening of the case was the publication by Egorov in the Toroptsian citizens of the post with a photograph of Vladimir Putin and the call to “bring the Kremlin rat” administered by him. Now all the contents from the group are removed.

Egorov himself associated the persecution with the anti -corruption investigations that he published in his group. One of them concerned the illegal removal of sand from the quarries by the local company Spetsstroy, controlled by the head of the Toropetsky district, Alexander Brig, and the head of the Westwinsky department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Viktor Smirnov.

In April, shortly after the publication of the investigation about Spetsstroy, the son of a police chief Andrei Smirnov, a stone broke a window in the house of Egorov.

On June 8, the activist went to interrogation in the case of extremism.

According to the human rights project Emigrussia, on June 13, Yegorov fled to Ukraine and asked for political asylum. The activist settled and got a job in Chernigov, and in the same place he turned to the migration service for the status.

On the night of June 24-25, unknown people set fire to Egorov’s house in Toropets. There were the remaining wife and minor daughter of the activist. One of the passers -by noticed a fire and caused firefighters, so the flame managed to extinguish in time.

On July 5, when Egorov was supposed to extend the certificate of contacting the asylum or get a refusal of status, SBU employees came to his house. They detained Egorov and took to the neutral strip of the Russian-Ukrainian border in the area of ​​the Ukrainian checkpoint "Senkovka". SBU employees told Egorov that he was denied refugee status, since supposedly Russia did not put him on the wanted list. According to Egorov, the Ukrainian border guards issued him as an illegally crossing the border without a passport and banned entry into the country for three years. However, later the SBU informed Gromadske TV reporters that Egorov was allegedly not deported and did not forbid him to enter Ukraine. According to the law, after refusing to grant refugee status, Egorov had five days to appeal such a decision.

Since then, the activist has been on a neutral strip for some time, and then moved to Belarus. In Minsk, he turned to the Office of the UN Supreme Commissioner for Refugees and asked human rights defenders to understand his situation.

On August 1, the Belarusian human rights organization Human Constanta reported on the loss of Egorova. According to human rights activists, from July 29, the opposition has stopped contacting them. As it became known, on July 28 to the hostel, where Egorov lived, employees of the Belarusian KGB came and detained the activist. On the same day before the detention, Yegorov managed to inform the human rights activists that he was put on the wanted list in Russia.

On July 31, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Minsk arrested a political emigrant for two days under article 17.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of Belarus (petty hooliganism).

On the evening of August 1, the investigator contacted Sidorkina and said that Yegorov was detained and was in Toropets.