The Moscow City Court overturned the fine of an ANS activist for the May Day march in 2018

The Moscow City Court overturned the fine of Association of Popular Resistance activist Dmitry Karasev. His defender Nikolai Zboroshenko reported this to OVD-Info.

Previously, the Presnensky District Court fined Karasev five thousand rubles, finding him guilty of violating the rules of the event (Part 5 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code). According to the court of first instance, in 2018 Karasev took part in the May Day march of nationalists along Gogolevsky Boulevard, which the activistsfailed to coordinate with the authorities.

In fact, Karasev, according to Zboroshenko, did not take part in the procession. He was detained that same evening at a conference of right-wing forces. First, he was taken to the nearest police department in the Timiryazevsky district, and then transported to the department in the Arbat district.

In reports, employees of the Center for Combating Extremism stated that they personally detained Karasev during a procession on the boulevard. However, now at a meeting of the city court they said that they did not take part in the arrest, but simply tried to compare Karasev’s clothes with the clothes of the protesters from photographs. Zboroshenko noted that the case file does not even include a description of the clothes in which the activist was detained, and the photographs from the action attached to the case turned out to be very unclear.

The fact that Karasev was actually detained at a different time and in a different area was stated only by the defense. At the request of Zboroshenko, the judge requested documents from the Timiryazevsky police department that confirmed this information.

In this regard, the judge dismissed the case for lack of proof of the activist’s guilt. Zboroshenko noted that the judge, right during the hearing, scolded the employees of Center “E”: “It’s good that this was a fine, which is not enforced until it comes into force. What if it was an arrest? Then heads would roll.”