The defendant in the DOXA case was left with an assigned defense attorney in the trial against her wishes

The magistrate in Moscow left a lawyer assigned to the defendant in the DOXA case, Natasha Tyshkevich, in the trial, despite the fact that Tyshkevich already has another lawyer. This was reported by the student publication DOXA.

At the preliminary hearing in the DOXA case, the judge called Natalya Rudykh, an appointed lawyer, for the activist. The defense protested this decision and filed a motion to disqualify the appointed defense attorney, which was supported by Rudykh herself. Despite this, the judge approved Rudykh as a defense lawyer.

Tyshkevich has a lawyer by agreement - Alexander Aldaev, who has represented her interests since the initiation of the criminal case.

The judge's actions violate the Code of Criminal Procedure , which allows the accused to refuse the assistance of a defense lawyer at any time, and also contradicts the position of the Constitutional Court of Russia.

The title has been changed and the text of the news has been updated due to the emergence of new information.

• On the morning of April 14, four journalists from the student publication DOXA - Armen Aramyan, Alla Gutnikova, Vladimir Metelkin and Natasha Tyshkevich - were searched. After that, they were taken for interrogation to the Investigative Committee, and then to the court for a hearing to select a preventive measure: all four were given a ban on certain actions with strict restrictions. In fact, defendants can only leave the house for interrogations and two hours a day for walks. On September 10, the preventive measure was once again extended for a month.
• Journalists are accused of involving minors in activities that are dangerous to them (Article 151.2 of the Criminal Code). A criminal case was opened because of a DOXA video in which the publication’s participants addressed students - they urged them not to be afraid of threats of expulsion for participating in rallies. Subsequently, the magazine's editors deleted this video at the request of Roskomnadzor. Under the same article, a case was opened against the former head of Alexei Navalny’s headquarters network, Leonid Volkov. According to investigators, after Volkov published the video “How can we get Navalny out of prison,” DOXA employees, against the backdrop of active discussions on social networks, had an intention “to support the above calls and create their own publications.” Initially, Volkov and the DOXA editors were involved in the same case, but later the editors’ case was separated into separate proceedings.
• Initially, the editors of DOXA were accused of involving two or more minors in dangerous activities (clause “a”, part 2, article 151.2 of the Criminal Code) via the Internet (clause “c”, part 2, article 151.2 of the Criminal Code), later a charge of committing a crime was added a group of persons (clause “b”, part 2, article 151.2 of the Criminal Code).