Unlawful anti-extremism in March 2018

We we publish an overview of the main and most significant events in the field of misuse of anti-extremist legislation in Russia in March 2018.

All cases of criminal prosecution under anti-extremist articles, about whom we learned in March 2018 were associated with religious activities citizens and the expression of opinion regarding religion.

The pursuit religious organizations and believers

At the end of the month, FSB officers searched the premises of the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg and questioned eight Human. The search took place as part of the investigation of the case under Art. 171 (illegal business), Art. 282 (inciting hatred) and Art. 282.1 (organization of an extremist community) of the Criminal Code and was directed "to detect additional items and documents, confirming the criminal nature of the activities of the said religious group". Recall that the leaders of the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg are under arrest on this matter. We consider the persecution of Scientologists to be anti-extremist articles illegal. We wrote more about this here .

Prokhladnensky district In March, a court in Kabardino-Balkaria ruled to block four Witness websites Jehovah, including the site "Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia". Reason for filing a lawsuit served the fact that these resources contained " various sections, publications, magazines, books, videos, news about a religious organization "Jehovah's Witnesses ". Representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses were not allowed to participate in the proceedings. Recall that we consider it illegal as the liquidation of organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses for the implementation extremist activities, as well as the prohibition of materials published by them.

In March, we learned that February in Barnaul under Part 1.1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (involving a person in activities extremist organization) Samandar Gadoev, a native of Tajikistan, was convicted. He was sentenced to 1 year in prison in a penal colony. Obviously he was convicted for preaching Islam in one of the city cafes, because he is supporter of the banned religious movement Tablighi Jamaat. The movement brings together itinerant Muslim preachers and adheres to fundamentalist views, but does not promote violence, so we We consider it unlawful to ban it and persecute its supporters.

Moscow District military court at an offsite meeting in St. Petersburg in March sentenced to 8 years strict regime colonies under Part 2 of Art. 205.5 of the Criminal Code (participation in activities terrorist organization) 32-year-old Vladimir Shmotov. According to the investigation and court, Shmotov was a member of the radical Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir with 2011, since 2013 held party meetings, including in his apartment, attracted new people to the organization and for some time headed the regional cell. The defendant pleaded guilty, and the case was considered in a special order.

In addition, we learned about two rulings of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on cases related to Hizb ut-Tahrir", about which we had no information before.

At the beginning of the month The collegium of the Supreme Court overturned the sentence of Altynbek uulu Abdymanap and Hotamjon Karimov, whom the Moscow District Military Court in December 2017 sentenced to 10 and 11 years in prison in a strict regime colony, found guilty under Part 2 of Art. 205.5 CC in participation in activities Hizb ut-Tahrir. At the preliminary hearing Abdymanap and Karimov Moscow District Military Court returned the case to the prosecutor's office, and when the case again came to court, it was considered by the former judge, which is against the law. Therefore, the Supreme Court demanded that the Moscow The district military court reviewed the case in a different composition.

In the second half of March, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict handed down in December 2017 under Part 1 of Art. 205.5 of the Criminal Code (organization of activities terrorist organization) against Rahmiddin Kamolov, an activist human rights organization "Help - Yordam" for organizing activities of the Hizb ut-Tahrir cell. Moscow District a military court sentenced Kamolov to 16 years in a strict regime colony.

We believe that persecution of members "Hizb ut-Tahrir" only on the basis of party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.) on anti-terrorist articles is unlawful.

Persecution for anti-religious speech

In the second half of March it became known that in Kurgan the court stopped criminal prosecution of an 18-year-old local resident who was accused in insulting the feelings of believers (part 1 of article 148 of the Criminal Code), imposing a court fine on him in the amount of 30 thousand rubles. According to investigators, in December 2017, marking the day birth in a rented cottage, the young man discovered an Orthodox icon there. Turning the icon over, he took a picture with her in the mirror and posted the photo on the social network, accompanied by a comment offensive to the Orthodox. During preliminary investigation Kurgan repented of his deed and, in order to make amends caused harm, apologized to all believers through the social network, as well as donated money to an Orthodox church. Since he first made crime of minor gravity and at the same time compensated for the damage, the investigation sent to the court a motion to dismiss the case.

We believe that the concept of "insult feelings of believers" does not have a clear legal meaning and should not have been included in a criminal article. In this case, the post apparently did not contain aggressive appeals (which could be qualified as agitation hatred under 282 of the Criminal Code), and hardly represented such a danger that for him should have been prosecuted.

The same remark applies to the case brought to court in Barnaul in March. A local resident was accused of posting certain images on his page on the social network with texts. For xenophobic posts directed against people with "non-Slavic appearance" to him - probably justifiably - was charged under Part 1 of Art. 282, and for " expressing explicit disrespect for society, violating the norms of religious ethics "- under part 1 of article 148 of the Criminal Code. Note that citizens of secular states are generally not obliged to comply with the norms of religious ethics.

Administrative persecution

In March, we learned of three cases of misconduct, from our point of view, bringing to responsibility under Art. 20.29 Administrative Code (distribution of extremist materials or their storage for the purpose of distribution). A resident of the village of Uchkeken Karachay-Cherkessia was fined a thousand rubles for keeping houses and discussed with family members and parishioners of the local mosque the book "The Limit wishing", for the prohibition of which, in our opinion, there were no grounds. In Sevastopol the court sent under arrest for 11 days anarchist Alexei Shestakovich, who published in "VKontakte" two songs of the group recognized as extremist "The Ensemble of Christ the Savior and Mother Earth Cheese", having a purely satirical nature. In Barnaul, the head of the city branch "Other Russia" Yevgeny Bersenev was fined a thousand rubles for publication of his photograph in a T-shirt with the slogan "Orthodoxy or death", the prohibition of which we consider unlawful.

According to Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for demonstration of Nazi symbols and symbols of extremist organizations, not aimed at promoting a dangerous ideology, were six people were charged. Please note that the current law punishes any display of prohibited symbols, regardless of context, which leads to a large number of unjustified sanctions.

Back in February protocol under Art. 20.3 was drawn up in Krasnoyarsk in relation to a local deputy city ​​council of Vladimir Vladimirov. The reason was that on the page Deputy in the social network Facebook published a collage with a frame from the "Seventeen moments of spring", in which Stirlitz swings to hit the bottle on the head of SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Holtoff, on whose sleeve he wears bandage with a swastika. Holtoff's face in the picture has been changed to the face of a schoolboy from Novy Urengoy, Nikolai Desyatnichenko, who November last year, gave a speech in the Bundestag, because of which he was tried accused of justifying Nazism. Vladimirov explained that the publication was made for patriotic purposes. In March, the deputy was acquitted.

Union activist in Kazan Tatar youth "Azatlyk" Batyrkhan Agzamov received five days arrest for the publication in 2016 on VKontakte of a demotivator from two parts, on one of which the DPR militiaman Aleksey Milchakov poses near charred corpse, and on the other he is handed a stripe with a kolovrat. Above the collage an inscription was placed: "Russia is when you actually you burn people alive in a foreign country and pose with a smile next to you with their corpses, but upon returning to Moscow no charges are brought against you at the neo-Nazi convention."

mentioned above head of the Barnaul branch of The Other Russia Evgeny Bersenev was fined 1,000 rubles for publishing a photo with a cat in front of a flag banned (in our opinion - without proper reason) National Bolshevik parties. The fact that the cat in the picture partially covered the flag was not taken into account by law enforcement agencies and the courts.

In Sochi against the local opposition activist Konstantin Gudimov, a protocol was drawn up under Art. 20.3 for posting images with Nazi symbols on VKontakte: three covers of Time magazine, photographs of Hitler with the caption "Let's send it to Putin's Russia?" and the word "Sochi" laid out from the runes.

Two protocols under Art. 20.3 were also drawn up in relation to the deputy coordinator of the Novgorod headquarters Navalny Yaroslav Putrov, according to him, for posting an image on the social network the flag of a banned organization in the news about ISIS and for the meme with Hitler.

Svobodnensky city the court of the Amur region fined a local collector of items from the times Third Reich for publishing online ads for the sale of two collectible badges, copies of the NSDAP party badge and SS membership badge, with photographs goods.