The prosecutor's office returned the case of Dina Garina to the Investigative Committee

The case of the accused under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the nationalist demanded an additional investigation.

The prosecutor's office of the Central District of St. Petersburg returned to the Investigative Committee to eliminate the identified violations and conduct an additional investigation, the criminal case of Dina Garina, accused under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement of hatred on the basis of origin and membership in the social group "employees of the Center for Combating Extremism"). This was reported by the international human rights group "Agora" with reference to the lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov.

Earlier, in February 2017, Garina's case was returned to the prosecutor by the court. He came to the conclusion that the investigator violated Garina's right to familiarize herself with the case materials, did not explain her rights and committed other procedural violations, the charge was lengthy and did not establish actions related to the subjective side of the crime.

The case, originally brought to court in December 2016, was initiated in connection with the speech of the far-right activist Garina at a rally on March 15, 2015, during which she commented on the work of employees of the centers for countering extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Garina's speech, from our point of view, contained insults and racist statements, attributing to the employees of the "E" centers a different ethnic (non-Russian, mixed) origin, as well as "genetic hatred" for Russians. Garina is accused of "inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliating human dignity, that is, actions aimed at inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliating the dignity of a person or group of people on the grounds of origin, as well as belonging to any social group, " committed in public . The concept of incitement to hatred based on origin is absent from the law on combating extremist activity. However, it is included in Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, although rarely appears in law enforcement practice; apparently, it should be understood as inciting hatred on a national (ethnic) basis. Note that the object of inciting hatred in this case seems to be very vague (for example, should it be understood that Garina's speech is directed at all representatives of other ethnic groups, or only some, say, natives of the Caucasus or Central Asia). Considering that Garina's speech did not contain calls for violence and hardly posed a significant public danger, the expediency of criminal prosecution for inciting ethnic hatred in this case is doubtful.

As for inciting hatred towards the employees of the "E" centers as a social group, we consider such an accusation to be unjustified, since, from our point of view, Art. 282 of the Criminal Code should protect vulnerable groups of the population, and not law enforcement agencies, protected by other articles of the Criminal Code. It should be noted that the case against Garina was initiated only on the sixth attempt: five times the investigator of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg refused to initiate a case and appointed a new examination as part of the pre-investigation check, referring to the precedent with the case of the Voina group, which was closed . because the experts considered that law enforcement officers are not a social group. However, only expert examinations carried out at the request of the investigation were attached to the case. At the same time, the investigation posed questions to the experts about the presence in Garina's speech of signs of incitement to hatred, which, according to the law, only the court can answer. The expert opinions presented by the defense, which stated that the employees of the "E" centers should not be considered a social group, were not attached to the case.

Earlier, in March 2016, Dina Garina had already been convicted under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting national hatred) and part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity).

Sources

• In St. Petersburg, the prosecutor's office returned to the UK the case of extremism for criticizing the staff of the Center "E" // International human rights group "Agora". 2017. August 24.