Anarchist from St. Petersburg was requested 5 years in a colony in the case of justification of terrorism

In St. Petersburg, during a meeting of the First Western District Military Court, they requested a punishment in the form of 5 years in prison to LGBT activist and anarchist Alexander Merkulov, accused of publicly justification of terrorism. This was reported by "MBH Media" with reference to the lawyer Leonid Krikun.

“They studied evidence from the prosecution, from the defense. The court held a debate, the prosecutor asked five years of real imprisonment and two years of restricting the administration of sites and groups in social networks. From the side of the defense, we asked to be sentenced to a fine, ”the lawyer quotes the publication.

In December 2020, the court softened the preventive measure of Merkulov from detention in the pre -trial detention center for house arrest.

• According to investigators, Alexander Merkulov from November 1, 2018 to October 31, 2019 published on VKontakte under the pseudonym Aleksandr Pejic posts about 17-year-old anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who blew up a bomb in the building of the Arkhangelsk FSB. Experts found in the posts of “signs of justification of actions” anarchist. Merkulov was sent into custody in early July 2020. On October 5, the court extended its maintenance in the pre -trial detention center until November 6, and in November the preventive measure was again extended : until December 6. On October 28, it became known that Merkulov was transferred from a pre -trial detention center to a psychiatric hospital for examination.
• On the morning of October 31, 2018, in the UFSB building in Arkhangelsk, a 17-year-old local resident Mikhail Zhlobitsky blew up a bomb. Three employees were injured, the young man himself died. A few minutes before the explosion in Telegram in the open chat of the “Speech of the rebel” there was a message about the attack. Law enforcement officers opened a criminal case of a terrorist attack.
• In the footsteps of the explosion in the FSB, the security forces opened more than 20 criminal cases of “justification of terrorism” due to statements in social networks: the case of Evgeny Gavrilov ; The case of Svetlana Prokopyeva ; The case of Ivan Lyubshin ; The case ofAlexei Shibanov ; the case of Nadezhda Belova ; The case of Vyacheslav Lukichev ; The case of Lyudmila Stech ; Case of Ekaterina Muranova ; The case of Konstantin Vasilyanov ; The case of Alexander Kovalenko ; The case of Galina Gorina ; The case of Pavel Zlomnov ; The case of Alexander Dovydenkov ; the case of hope of Romasenko; The case of Alexander Sokolov ; The case of Alexander Merkulov ; The case ofSergey Arbuzov ; Oleg Nemtsev’s case; The case of a resident of Omsk (the name and surname are unknown); The case of Sergei Sizykh ; The case of Valery Klimenchenko , the case of Dmitry Nadein , the case of Oleg Elansky ; Maxim Smolnikov's case; The case of Vladimir Boboshin ; The case of Evgeny Volnov ; The case of Sergey Kuznetsov .