Misuse of Anti-Extremism in March 2018

The following is our review of the primary and most representative events in the misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation in March 2018.

All cases of criminal prosecution under anti-extremist articles we recorded in March 2018 were related to religious activities of citizens or expressions of opinion regarding religion.

Prosecution against Religious Organizations and Believers

At the end of the month, FSB officers searched the premises of the Church of Scientology in St. Petersburg and interrogated eight people. The search, conducted as a part of the investigation of the case under Article 171 (illegal enterprise), Article 282 (incitement to hatred) and Article 282.1 (organizing an extremist community) of the Criminal Code, was intended “to find additional items and documents confirming the criminal nature of the activities of this religious group.” We would like to remind that the leaders of the Church of Scientology of St. Petersburg are currently under arrest. We view prosecution of Scientologists under anti-extremist articles as inappropriate. This issue is covered in greater detail here.

The Prokhladnensky District Court of Kabardino-Balkaria issued a decision in March to block four Jehovah's Witnesses websites, including the “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia” site. The claim was based on the allegation that these resources contained “various sections, publications, magazines, books, videos, news regarding the religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses” Representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses were not allowed to participate in the proceedings. We regard as inappropriate both the liquidation of Jehovah's Witnesses organizations for their alleged engagement in extremist activities and the bans against their published materials.

We were informed in March that, in February, Samandar Gadoev, a native of Tajikistan, was found guilty under Article 282.2 Part 1.1 of the Criminal Code (involving a person in the activities of an extremist organization) in Barnaul. He was sentenced to one year of imprisonment in a minimum security colony. Evidently, he was convicted for preaching Islam in one of the city cafes due to his support for the banned religious movement Tablighi Jamaat. The movement unites wandering Muslim preachers and adheres to fundamentalist views but does not advocate violence, so we regard the ban against it and prosecutions against its supporters as inappropriate.

During its March visiting session in St. Petersburg, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced 32-year-old Vladimir Shmotov to 8 years in a maximum security colony under Part 2 of Article 205.5 (participating in the activities of a terrorist organization). According to the investigation and the court, Shmotov was a member of the radical Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir since 2011; starting in 2013, he held party meetings, including in his apartment, and recruited new people to join the organization; for a period of time, Shmotov also headed the regional cell. The defendant pleaded guilty, and the case was examined according to special procedure.

In addition, we received information on two decisions by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in the cases related to Hizb ut-Tahrir that we had not recorded previously.

Earlier this month, a collegium of the Supreme Court's overturned the verdict against Altynbek uulu Abdymanap and Khotamzhon Karimov, previously sentenced by the Moscow District Military Court to 10 and 11 years in a maximum security prison. Abdymanap and Karimov were found guilty in December 2017 under Part 2 of Article 205.5 for participating in the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir. At the preliminary hearings, the Moscow District Military Court returned the case to the Prosecutor's Office, and, when the case once again reached the court, it was presided over by the same judge, which is against the law. Therefore, the Supreme Court demanded that the Moscow District Military Court review the case after changing the court personnel.

In the latter half of March, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict, issued in December 2017 under Article 205.5 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (organizing a terrorist organization) against Rakhmiddin Kamolov – an activist of the human rights organization Help-Yordam – for organizing the activities of a Hizb ut-Tahrir cell. The Moscow District Military Court sentenced Kamolov to 16 years in a maximum security colony.

We believe that prosecution of Hizb ut-Tahrir members under anti-terrorist articles solely on the basis of their party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.) is not appropriate.

Prosecution for Anti-Religious Statements

In the second half of March, it became known that a court in Kurgan discontinued the criminal case against an 18-year-old local resident charged with insulting the feelings of believers (Article 148 Part 1 of the Criminal Code), after sentencing him to a legal fine of 30 thousand rubles. According to the investigators, when celebrating his birthday in a rented cottage in December 2017, the young man found an Orthodox icon. He photographed his reflection in a mirror, holding the icon upside down, and posted the photo on a social network accompanied by a caption that was insulting toward Orthodox believers. During the preliminary investigation, the Kurgan resident expressed repentance regarding his act, and, in order to make amends, he apologized to all believers via a social network and donated money to an Orthodox church. Since it was the young man’s first crime, the crime was minor, and, moreover, the offender had compensated for his act, the investigation petitioned the court for the termination of the case.

We believe that the concept of “insulting the feelings of believers” lacks clear legal meaning and does not belong in the Criminal Code. In this case, the post obviously contained no aggressive appeals (which could be qualified as incitement of hatred under Article 282 of the Criminal Code), and was unlikely to be so dangerous as to merit criminal prosecution.

The same remark is applicable to the case, which went to trial in March in Barnaul. A local resident was accused of placing certain images with captions on his social network page. He faced charges under Part 1 of Article 282 – probably justified – for xenophobic posts directed against people of “non-Slavic appearance” and charges under Part 1 of Article 148 for “expressing obvious disrespect to society, violating norms of religious ethics.” It is worth noting that citizens of a secular state do not have to conform to norms of religious ethics.

Administrative Prosecution

In March, we learned about three cases of prosecution under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (distribution of extremist materials or storage thereof with intent to distribute) that we regarded as inappropriate. A resident of Uchkeken village in Karachay-Cherkessia was fined a thousand rubles for storing at home and discussing with his family members and parishioners of the local mosque the book Predel Zhelaiushego [The Limit of the Willing], which we consider unreasonably prohibited. A court in Sevastopol sentenced anarchist Alexei Shestakovich to 11 days of arrest for publishing on VKontakte two songs by the band Ensemble of Christ the Savior and Crude Mother Earth – purely satirical but, nevertheless, recognized as extremist. Yevgeny Bersenev, the head of the Barnaul branch of the Other Russia party, was fined one thousand rubles in Barnaul for publishing his own photo wearing a T-shirt decorated with the slogan “Orthodoxy or Death” (inappropriately prohibited, in our opinion).

Six people faced responsibility under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for display of Nazi symbols and symbols of extremist organizations not intended as propaganda of a dangerous ideology. It is worth reminding that the current legislation punishes any display of prohibited symbols, regardless of its context, leading to a large number of unwarranted sanctions.

Back in February, the report under Article 20.3 was filed in Krasnoyarsk regarding local City Council Deputy Vladimir Vladimirov. The charge was based on a publication on the Deputy’s Facebook page – a collage featuring a still frame from the famous Soviet movie Seventeen Moments of Spring, in which Stierlitz (the protagonist) is about to hit Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Holtoff on the head with a bottle; Holtoff is wearing an armband with a swastika. His face is replaced by the face of Nikolay Desyatnichenko, a schoolboy from Novy Urengoy, who delivered a speech in the Bundestag in November 2017 and was subsequently blamed for justifying Nazism. Vladimirov explained that the image had been published for “patriotic purposes.” The deputy was acquitted in March.

Batyrkhan Agzamov, an activist of the Tatar youth organization Azatlyk, was sentenced in Kazan to five days under arrest for publishing a two-part de-motivator on VKontakte in 2016. One part depicted Alexei Milchakov, a member of the Donetsk People's Republic militia, posing near a charred corpse, while the other part shows Milchakov receiving a patch decorated with the kolovrat symbol. The caption above the collage read: “Russia: you can practically burn people alive in a foreign country and pose next to their corpses with a smile, but then face no charges, once you return to a neo-Nazi congress in Moscow.”

Above-mentioned Yevgeny Bersenev, the head of the Other Russia Barnaul branch, was fined one thousand rubles for publishing a photo of a cat depicted against the background of the National Bolshevik Party flag; the NBP has been banned (inappropriately, in our opinion). The law enforcement agencies and the court did not take into account the fact that the cat in the picture partially obscured the flag.

A report under Article 20.3 was filed in Sochi against local opposition activist Konstantin Gudimov for publishing images on VKontakte that contained Nazi symbols. The images included three Time Magazine covers, photos of Hitler with the caption “How about Sending Putin to Russia?” and the word “Sochi” spelled in runes.

Two reports under Article 20.3 were filed with respect to Yaroslav Putrov, the deputy coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s Novgorod headquarters. According to him, the charge was based on his social network publications of an image depicting the flag of a banned organization (part of the news item about the ISIS) and of a meme featuring Hitler.

The Svobodnensky Town Court of the Amur Region fined a local collector of Third Reich period memorabilia for publishing online the advertisements regarding the sale of two badges – copies of the NSDAP party badge and an SS member badge – accompanied by the photographs of these items.