In Sochi, a Navalny supporter was given 8 days of arrest

The Central District Court of Sochi has arrested an employee of the local election headquarters of Alexei Navalny, Olesya Khristosenko, for 8 days for an unapproved public event in the form of a photo. This was reported to OVD-Info by the defender of the activist Alexander Popkov.

Earlier, Navalny's headquarters volunteer Konstantin Gudimov was given 12 days of administrative arrest for riding a bicycle with a balloon. He went on a hunger strike.

According to Popkov, the police committed many violations:

For example, the police did not consider my petition to dismiss the case, but simply sent it to the court: while the administrative case was being processed by them, they had to immediately consider the petition and issue a ruling. When Gudimov's case was taken to court for the first time, there was no information about his passport. The second time, the cases were returned because the police did not correct the violations that the court had already pointed out. Only one case was returned three times, the other four times, I cannot list all the violations. In one of the court decisions, devastating, once again returning the case to the police, it was said that the descriptive part of the protocol did not meet the requirements of the law. The police did not alter the protocol, but made changes to it by some new left-wing definition that was not based on the law.

Khristosenko and Gudimov were accused of holding an uncoordinated picket “with the participation of two or more persons” because of a photograph taken by the staff of the headquarters on the porch of the building before the October 7 rally. They were charged with Part 8 of Art. 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (repeated violation of the rules for holding a public event). Gudimov and Khristosenko were detained on October 13 and left for the night in the police department.

On October 22, the police came for Gudimov to his home and took him to the department, and then to the court. But the judge refused to consider the materials of the case and stated that the activist could be free.

Prior to this, judges acted in a similar way and also refused to consider the cases of activists. On October 14, the Central District Court of Sochi postponed the hearing on the case and sent it to the police for revision. The same decisions were made by the court on October 18 , 19 and 20.