The ECHR communicated the complaint of the fined defender of “Torfyanka”

The ECHR communicated the complaint of the fined defender of the Moscow Torfyanki Park, Vadim Ozhogin. His interests are represented in the ECHR by lawyers from the Memorial Human Rights Center.

The man was detained during a protest against the construction of a church on November 27, 2016. In December of the same year, the court fined the activist one thousand rubles.

Then the court found that Ozhogin was guilty of petty hooliganism (20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), since he allegedly swore. As eyewitnessesnoted , the detention itself took place at the command of an unknown person in civilian clothes. A man stood up for pensioner Murcia Rylova when she was rudely detained by police officers. In court, the police differed in their testimony about the circumstances of the arrest: one of them denied the fact of obscene language, the second insisted on it.

The complaint states that the executive authorities of the Russian Federation violated Article 5 (the right to freedom and personal integrity), Art. 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The ECHR combined Ozhogin’s complaint with the complaints of two other people. Igor Klochkov complained about two detentions in 2016 in Moscow. On May 5, he was detained wearing a Putin mask at the exit from the Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro station during a rally against the tightening of the law on rallies. On November 9, 2016, Klochkov was detained during a single picket near the Prosecutor General’s Office building in support of Ildar Dadin. In both cases, administrative cases were opened against the activist for violations of the procedure for holding public events.

The third Russian, whose complaint was communicated by the ECHR along with the complaints of Ozhogin and Klochkov, is Andrei Teslenko, who was detained in Novoaltaisk on the night of November 29-30, 2011 on charges of illegal campaigning and later fined one thousand rubles. Teslenko told OVD-Info that he was posting leaflets against the “Party of Crooks and Thieves.”

In connection with the detentions of Klochkov, the ECHR asked the Russian government whether the right to a fair trial, as well as to freedom of assembly, had been violated. In relation to Vadim Ozhogin, the court asked whether the right to freedom of expression (Article 10 of the European Convention) had been violated.

Andrei Teslenko left Russia in 2014 after a criminal case was opened against him for inciting hatred (Article 282 of the Criminal Code) in connection with the republication of a text called “Russophobia Post.”