The judge closed the trial of the Navalny campaign volunteer

The Novocheboksarsky City Court closed the trial against Aleksey Navalny's local campaign headquarters volunteer Aleksey Mironov, accused under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremism) and Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity). This was reported on the portal "7 × 7".

The judge granted the request of the prosecutor, who asked to close the trial due to the fact that some witnesses for the prosecution are FSB officers, and their testimony may contain state secrets.

According to lawyer Yuri Ivanov, the court had no grounds for that decision:

In my opinion, there were no legal grounds for considering the case behind closed doors. But, unfortunately, such a practice has developed that, under Article 282, petitions are received from witnesses who are employees of the FSB to consider the case in camera, which are submitted by the state prosecutor and are immediately satisfied by the court.

The court was also attended by the head of Navalny's headquarters in Chuvashia, Semyon Kochkin, and the coordinator of Open Russia in the region, Dmitry Semenov. According to Kochkin, the judge behaved like a strict school teacher and forbade the audience everything that was possible:

The judge acted like an elementary school teacher. She forbade us from using gadgets and wanted us to sit at the meeting like at school desks - we didn’t even have to cross our legs or lean on the back of the bench. The bailiff came up to us and said: “You can’t use a laptop! Turn off your phone!" As a result, Dmitry Semyonov was forced to turn off his laptop, and I had to log out of Twitter. Then the bailiff just stood over us and watched that we no longer turn on the gadgets.

In August 2016, Mironov was fined 1,500 rubles under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (public display of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols) for reposting an image with a swastika that drew an analogy between Putin and Hitler. After that, the activist removed all posts from his page.

On June 17, 2017, police officers came to the activist with a search. Hard drives, three knives and a movie disc were confiscated from him. The reason for the persecution of Mironov was “a graphic image of a certificate of a citizen subject to conscription for military service, with the text in English:“ God bless the USA Keep calm and f*** Russia ”and the inscription over the image:“ I officially call for ... ... …. authorities"". For this image, published in one of the social networks, law enforcement agencies opened a case under Art. 280 of the Criminal Code. In addition, for a post on VKontakte containing statements about Muslims, the FSB opened criminal proceedings under Art. 282.

Now Mironov is under house arrest.

The judge closed the trial of the Navalny campaign volunteer

The judge granted the request of the prosecutor, who asked to close the trial due to the fact that some witnesses for the prosecution are FSB officers, and their testimony may contain state secrets.

According to lawyer Yuri Ivanov, the court had no grounds for that decision:

In my opinion, there were no legal grounds for considering the case behind closed doors. But, unfortunately, such a practice has developed that, under Article 282, petitions are received from witnesses who are employees of the FSB to consider the case in camera, which are submitted by the state prosecutor and are immediately satisfied by the court.

The judge acted like an elementary school teacher. She forbade us from using gadgets and wanted us to sit at the meeting like at school desks - we didn’t even have to cross our legs or lean on the back of the bench. The bailiff came up to us and said: “You can’t use a laptop! Turn off your phone!" As a result, Dmitry Semyonov was forced to turn off his laptop, and I had to log out of Twitter. Then the bailiff just stood over us and watched that we no longer turn on the gadgets.

Now Mironov is under house arrest.