At the trial of the administrators of the AUE public pages in Yekaterinburg, the prosecutor's office requested real terms for the accused

The debate began on the case of Nikolai Babarika, Natalia Babarika and Artem Zuev.

On August 26, 2020, the debate on the case began at the Yekaterinburg Garrison Military Court public administrators who promoted the AUE.

Nikolai Babarika, his wife Natalya Babarika and their friend Artem Zuev are charged under Part 2 of Art. 280 (calls for extremist activity), part 2 of Art. 282 (inciting hatred towards FSB and police officers), as well as under Art. 282.1 of the Criminal Code - in the creation of an extremist community. The criminal case was investigated by the central office of the FSB.

According to investigators, contract serviceman Nikolai Babarika and his girlfriend (currently his wife) Natalya Babarika, who worked as a cashier, administered the public pages "A.U.E" (Nikolai created it at the age of 17) and "✵Sh✵P ✵A✵N✵A✵". Their friend administered the community "✵✵✵Free Master✵✵✵Shop of Interests✵✵✵", and also organized the work of the printing shop "Absolut" and, together with Nikolai and Natalya, traded backgammon, rosaries and phone cases designed in the style of thieves' romance. As Natalya Babarika stated, they all considered this activity exclusively as a side job. However, Natalya is also accused of publishing 14 posts calling for violence against police and FSB officers.

According to Alexei Bushmakov, lawyer for the Agora International Human Rights Group, who represents the interests of Natalia Babarika, the prosecutor asked to sentence Nikolai Babarika to eight years in a penal colony with a ban on administering websites for four years and restriction of freedom for a year, Natalya Babarika and Artem Zuev to four years in a penal colony with a ban on administering websites for four years and restriction of freedom for a year. Nikolai Babarika and Zuev pleaded guilty, Natalya Babarika did not.

The persecution of Nikolai and Natalia Babarika and Artem Zuev under anti-extremist articles seems doubtful to us. We believe that although the ideology of the underworld (and the AUE subculture, in particular) is oriented toward illegal activities and is conceptually incompatible with the realization of the constitutional rights of citizens, this ideology is not political and is not aimed at changing the constitutional order. Therefore, activities to popularize this ideology should not be the subject of anti-extremist legal regulation, although in principle it can be criminalized. The recent ban on the AUE as a single extremist organization, despite the fact that in reality there is no such a common organization, seems unreasonable to us, and the bill submitted to the State Duma on blocking information that promotes the ideology of criminal subcultures is unsuccessful. Perhaps, for the organizers of structures exploiting criminal topics and inciting violence, it was necessary to provide for a new criminal norm, similar in composition to Part 1 of Art. 239 of the Criminal Code (creation of a public association whose activities involve violence against citizens). But in general, we believe that it is useless to fight the romanticization of crime with prohibitive, i.e. violent measures: this is a matter of ensuring public confidence in the judicial and penitentiary systems, a matter of working with public morality and public opinion in the spirit of rejection of the cult of violence.

Sources

• In Yekaterinburg, the prosecutor's office asked for terms for those accused of creating and participating in the AUE // Pavel Chikov - the head of "Agora". Channel in Telegram. 2020. August 26.