The Moscow Regional Court commuted the sentence imposed in the case against activist Valentin Sokolov

In March 2018, the Moscow Regional Court commuted to 8 months in a penal colony the sentence of activist Valentin Sokolov, sentenced to 1.5 years under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code.

In March 2018, the Moscow Regional Court considered a complaint against the decision of the Voskresensky City Court dated January 12, 2018, according to which Valentin Sokolov was found guilty of inciting hatred (part 1 of article 282 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced to one and a half years in a penal colony for publishing xenophobic social media content.

Recall that Sokolov is an activist from the city of Kolomna near Moscow, who in 2016 was nominated for deputies of the Moscow Regional Duma from the Rodina party.

According to Sokolov himself, the case against him was initiated on July 15, 2016, in July 2017 it was terminated, and then started again on new episodes. As a result, he was accused of posting on the Odnoklassniki network an image with text inciting hatred of Russians, as well as posting videos on Facebook with xenophobic comments calling, among other things, for violence against blacks.

We consider the accusation regarding the publication in Odnoklassniki to be unlawful, because according to the screenshots, Sokolov reposted the image with a pro-Ukrainian text that called for the murder of Russians, accompanying it with the comment: “ How stubborn do you have to be to carry such heresy. Or deliberately kindle. It's scary to read ." However, the fact that Sokolov republished the text not for the purpose of propagating the ideas set out in it, but, on the contrary, with the aim of discrediting them, was not reflected in the case file: the investigation only drew attention to the fact that in the “Miscellaneous” folder on Sokolov’s page, a picture with The text was saved without comment (on the Odnoklassniki social network, all published images are automatically saved in this folder).

The publications on Sokolov's Facebook page are indeed openly racist and fall under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. However, Sokolov himself assured that the page where the videos and comments were found did not belong to him and was fabricated.

The Moscow Regional Court partially satisfied the complaint and decided to reduce the sentence from 1.5 years to 8 months in prison.
It is not clear why such a harsh sentence was imposed: no aggravating circumstances were mentioned in the indictment, moreover, there was an indication that the accused had young children.

As a reminder, the SOVA Center considers it excessive to impose a sentence of imprisonment only for statements.

Sources

• MOSOBLSUD REDUCED THE SENTENCE OF V.SOKOLOV, CONVINCED FOR HATRED PUBLISHES IN SOCIAL NETWORKS // City News Agency "Moscow". March 28, 2018