Svetlana Prokopyeva's case returned for further investigation

The criminal case of a Pskov journalist accused of justifying terrorism has been returned to the investigator.

On December 24, 2019, it became known that the prosecutor's office returned the case of the Pskov journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva to the investigator. The journalist herself told the media about this. The reason for this decision is still unknown, but, according to Prokopyeva, it may be due to the need for additional expertise.

Radio Liberty employee Svetlana Prokopeva is charged under Part 2 of Art. 205.2 of the Criminal Code (public justification of terrorism in the media). The initiation of the case became known in February 2019. The reason was the broadcast of Prokopyeva “A Minute of Enlightenment”, which aired on the radio station “Echo of Moscow in Pskov” in November 2018. The transcript of the broadcast was published on the Pskov news feed website.

We are talking about an issue dedicated to the explosion in the FSB office in Arkhangelsk. Analyzing this event, Prokopyeva argued that the actions of the young man who committed the explosion were due to the repressive policies of the state, which limits the possibilities for a civilized political struggle and expression of opinion and shows cruelty against citizens. The journalist noted that there is a great risk that young people growing up in an atmosphere of cruelty of the state will respond to the state in the same way.

Both Echo of Moscow in Pskov and Pskovskaya Newsfeed received warnings from Roskomnadzor in December for this material. On August 30, the Pskov City Court upheld these warnings. On February 6, the radio station was fined under Part 6 of Art. 13.15 Administrative Code for 150 thousand rubles. On February 7, in a similar case, the Magistrate's Court fined 200,000 rubles to Civil Press LLC, which publishes the Pskov Newsfeed website.

On October 2, 2019, the HRC addressed the prosecutor of the Pskov region, Sergei Belov, with a statement in which he proposed to stop the persecution of Prokopyeva. The statement, referring to the conclusion of the Guild of Linguistic Experts on Documentation and Information Disputes (GLADIS), said that Prokopyeva's statements did not contain signs of justifying terrorism. According to the HRC, the journalist talked about the " public danger of suppression by the state of the protest activity of citizens ," which is reflected in the mood of young people. The Council noted that this point of view " is well known in Russian public life " and stressed that journalists should have the right to speak freely on the subject of " the psychological aspects of terrorism ."

On October 19, 2019, the investigation of the case was completed . To date, Prokopyeva is under house arrest.

On January 23, 2020, Prokopyeva announced that after the case was returned from the prosecutor's office, the investigation appointed a new examination. This is due to the fact that an additional comprehensive forensic psychological and linguistic examination conducted at the North-West Regional Forensic Center of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation established the presence of linguistic and psychological signs of justifying terrorism in the text version of the material, but not in the audio recording: only the text contains the heading "Repressions for the state", photos and "takeaways" (formatting of individual sentences in italics and increased font size); at the same time, she did not raise the question of the signs of propaganda of terrorism before the experts. A new examination will be carried out by experts from Khakassia.

Sources

• Criminal case on justifying terrorism of Pskov journalist Prokopyeva returned for additional investigation // Mediazone. December 24, 2019
• Svetlana Prokopyeva's Facebook post. January 23, 2020