The court in Ufa did not restore the status of lawyer Burkin, who criticized the judicial system on social networks

The Oktyabrsky District Court of Ufa rejected the claim of Open Russia member Vitaly Burkin, who filed a complaint against his disbarment after publishing posts on social networks criticizing the judicial system. Ramil Akhmetgaliev reported this to Mediazona from the international human rights group Agora.

“Today the court announced the operative part of the decision. After receiving the motivation, we will study it and appeal,” the lawyer said.

On October 26, 2017, the Council of the Bar Chamber of Bashkortostan deprived Burkin of his lawyer status. This happened after the chairman of the Supreme Court of the Republic complained to the chamber about Burkin’s posts on social networks, who criticized the Russian judicial system on his pages on Facebook, VKontakte and LiveJournal.

The Qualifications Commission checked this information and decided that the lawyer’s posts “are clearly negative in relation to the judicial system and contain various kinds of criticism and claims against the courts.”

Burkin himself called the decision of the Council and the Commission “legally void”, since, in his opinion, these bodies of the legal community “independently assumed the functions of the judiciary.”

“The disciplinary offense, according to the commission, was that I violated the rules of conduct for lawyers on the Internet. The Commission, and then the Council, in the absence of a judicial act stating that I had committed insult, slander or dissemination of information that did not correspond to reality, obviously did not have the legal competence to draw the conclusions set out in the conclusion and decision; accordingly, there were no grounds to draw conclusions “that I violated the requirements of the law on the legal profession,” Burkin indicated in the lawsuit.