A flash drive with a recording of his arrest disappeared from the case file of Konstantin Kotov, convicted under the “Dadin article.”

A flash drive with a video recording of his arrest has disappeared from the case file of activist Konstantin Kotov, convicted under the “Dada article,” lawyer Mikhail Biryukov told Mediazona.

Today, the Moscow City Court began a re-examination of the appeal against the verdict of Kotov, who was sentenced to four years in prison. The defense asked the court to re-examine the video recording of the activist’s detention, but it was not included in the materials.

Lawyers asked for an internal review due to the loss of material evidence. In addition, they asked to call witnesses for questioning.

After this, the hearing was postponed to April 16 - in order to call witnesses and for the defense to provide a copy of the video recording.

Konstantin Kotov received four years in prison under the article of repeated violation of the rules of holding protests (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code) for attending four peaceful protests and posting on Facebook.

In December, journalist Anton Zhelnov asked President Vladimir Putin to pay attention to Kotov’s case. After this, the president instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office to check the legality of the activist’s sentence. As a result, the Constitutional Court decided to reconsider the activist’s case, and the appeal decision was overturned .