The contents of the prosecutor's office's claim to ban the structures of Navalny's supporters have become known

A description of the materials attached to the lawsuit to recognize the FBK, SFPG and Navalny's headquarters as extremist organizations has been published.

On May 17, 2021, the Kommersant newspaper published the content of the unclassified part of the materials attached to the lawsuit filed by the Moscow prosecutor's office to recognize the headquarters of Alexei Navalny as extremist, as well as the organizations Anti-Corruption Foundation and the Foundation for the Protection of Citizens' Rights (both recognized as "performing the functions of a foreign agent ").

Part of the materials of the claim is classified due to the fact that it contains the personal data of security officials who filed claims about the damage caused by the participants in the rallies. However, in the open part of the materials, according to the newspaper, there are several lists of people who were previously brought to trial for extremist offenses and crimes, violations of the law on public events and participation in the activities of an undesirable organization. At the same time, according to the newspaper, the lists include not only employees of the headquarters of Navalny and the FBK, but also "activists, independent politicians and ordinary citizens, whose connection with the opposition is sometimes not indicated even indirectly." So, the Nizhny Novgorod journalist Irina Slavina and a resident of Tatarstan Mohammed El-Ayubi, convicted under Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism) for uploading a photo of Hitler to the Immortal Regiment website. According to the publication, most of the people on the lists were held accountable for comments, less often for a post on social networks, while their content varied from calls for riots to displaying prohibited symbols.

Some of these lists were provided by the regional prosecutor's offices as part of an audit conducted by the Prosecutor General's Office in early February, after the protests. At the same time, in some cases, the prosecutor's office connects the actions of the convicts with the fact that they were subscribed to the pages of Navalny's headquarters. So, the Vladimir prosecutor's office considered that Navalny's headquarters influenced the former journalist Alexander Stepanov, convicted under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity) for calls to "kill United Russia". Novosibirsk Ildar Sadykov, convicted in 2018 under Part 2 of Art. 205.2 of the Criminal Code (public calls for terrorism on the Internet) and Part 3 of Art. 212 of the Criminal Code (calls for riots) for commenting in the group of the local headquarters, criticized the opposition for the peaceful nature of the rallies. However, according to the prosecutor's office, the fact that the group's administrators did not promptly remove such comments in itself indicates the presence of signs of extremism in the activities of the headquarters.

The materials of the claim also contain data from FBK inspections conducted by the Ministry of Justice. They are devoted mainly to the details of foreign financing of FBK: it follows from the documents that after FBK was recognized as a "foreign agent", its director asked the Ministry of Justice to cancel this decision due to the fact that 143 thousand rubles received from abroad were returned, but the Ministry of Justice did not found confirmation of this fact. A year later, FBK again asked to remove the status of "foreign agent", but the Ministry of Justice found small transfers from various foreigners to Yandex.Wallet for a total of 26,000 rubles. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice did not see manifestations of extremist activity in the activities of the FBK.

Earlier it was also reported that the materials of the claim mention a criminal case initiated in February under Part 1 of Art. 239 of the Criminal Code (creation of a public association whose activities involve violence against citizens or other harm to their health) in relation to Alexei Navalny, director of the FBK Ivan Zhdanov and former head of Navalny's headquarters Leonid Volkov.

It should be noted that calls for riots, the rehabilitation of Nazism, violations of the law on rallies, participation in the activities of an undesirable organization and the creation of an association whose activities involve violence against citizens are not in themselves classified by the legislator as extremist activity. The exception is sentences under the relevant criminal articles, which take into account the motive of hatred or enmity.

As for the conduct of extremist activity as such, we do not have data that would indicate that employees of Navalny's headquarters, the FBK and the SFPG were systematically held accountable for it. From our point of view, there is no causal relationship between their activities and individual sentences under the "extremist" articles of the Criminal Code, handed down to subscribers of headquarters and FBK in social networks. We believe that there is no reason to attribute to the activities of Navalny's headquarters any heated political discussions that social media users had in their groups.

Sources

• Kira Dyuryagina. The article is in the comments. // Kommersant. May 17, 2021