Alexey Mironov will be released from prison

The Cheboksary activist was acquitted of charges under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code.

On January 22, 2019, the Leninsky District Court of Cheboksary decided to release from the colony opposition activist Alexei Mironov, a volunteer at Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in Cheboksary, who was sentenced in September under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activities on the Internet) and Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement of national hatred) to 2 years 3 months in a colony settlement.

At the request of the defense, the court dropped the charge against Mironov under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code in connection with its partial decriminalization. The term of punishment under Art. 280 of the Criminal Code was reduced to the year and three months he had already served. As Mironov's defender, lawyer of the International Human Rights Group "Agora" Yuri Ivanov, suggests, on February 2, when the court decision comes into force, the activist will be able to go free.

Let us recall that earlier, in October 2017, the Supreme Court of Chuvashia considered an appeal against Mironov’s sentence and left the punishment imposed on him unchanged.

The reason for the persecution of Mironov was that he posted on his page on the social network VKontakte an image of a citizen’s ID card subject to conscription with the text in English: “God bless the USA Keep calm and f*** Russia” and the inscription over the image: “I officially call for a violent change of power.” From the point of view of the investigation, “ the specified graphic image with an inscription containing signs of extremism was deliberately, publicly posted by Mironov with the aim of encouraging an unlimited number of people to commit actions aimed at a violent change of power, and was addressed to an indefinitely wide range of people, which until June 21, 2016 year was the object of study and viewing by at least 2 users of the public information and telecommunications network Internet ."

In our opinion, there are grounds for persecuting an activist under Art. 280 of the Criminal Code did not exist. Such a general anti-government statement in the mouth of an ordinary citizen does not pose any danger to the state, especially since the audience that read the publication was minimal. According to Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, Mironov was accused of making a statement asserting the need to exterminate Muslims. We did not regard this accusation as unlawful.

Sources

• In Cheboksary, the court decided to release a Navalny supporter convicted of extremism // Agora International Human Rights Group. 2019. January 22.
• The court in Cheboksary released oppositionist Mironov from prison, convicted of demotivating crimes // Rosbalt. 2019. January 22.