A participant in the 2017 anti-corruption protests was transferred to St. Petersburg after extradition from Ukraine

A participant in the 2017 anti-corruption protests was transferred to pre-trial detention center No. 1 in St. Petersburg after being extradited from Ukraine. The man is accused of threatening to use violence against citizens; the prisoner claims that he gave testimony in this case under duress. This was reported by a lawyer cooperating with OVD-Info, Ksenia Mikhailova. The arrested person himself wished not to disclose his first and last name.

hooliganism As Mikhailova’s client said, in 2017 he actively participated in protests in St. Petersburg: in anti-corruption rallies that took place after the publication of the FBK film “He’s Not Dimon for You,” rallies in support of political prisoners and against the war in Ukraine. On September 28 of the same year, he was detained on charges of hooliganism. The police claimed that a man allegedly fired several times from an unidentified object in the direction of another person in a certain crowded place in St. Petersburg.

The detainee did not admit guilt, after which the police used force against him and began to threaten with a case against government officials at one of the 2017 protests. As a result, the man pleaded guilty to hooliganism. Law enforcement officers released him without any documents or a preventive measure.

attack In October 2017, the man, fearing for his safety, left for Lithuania, where he lived for four years. In 2021, he flew to Ukraine to visit his wife. Ukrainian border guards detained him at Boryspil airport.

As it turned out, Russian security forces continued to investigate the case of hooliganism all this time. The St. Petersburg resident was first put on the interstate and then international wanted list. Russian investigators charged him in absentia, and the court in St. Petersburg arrested him in absentia. The reason for this was the alleged undertaking not to leave the place. Such a document appears in the case file, but the St. Petersburg resident assures that it is falsified. He does not remember signing such a document; his signature in it is very different from the real one, the man said.

From August 2021 to February 2022, the accused was in Ukrainian pre-trial detention centers, at which time a decision was made to extradite him. On February 7, he was handed over to Russia.

At the beginning of March, the Vasileostrovsky court of St. Petersburg extended the arrest of the detainee for two months and two days. The day before, the man was transferred to pre-trial detention center No. 1 of St. Petersburg “Kresty”.

According to the St. Petersburg resident, during the transfer process to Belgorod, he was twice locked for three to four days in an unheated room without lighting, furniture, and covered with excrement. There he was subjected to humiliating treatment.

The man still does not admit his guilt in hooliganism. He links the case against him with participation in rallies.

On April 19, the St. Petersburg City Court will consider a complaint to extend his arrest.

• The protests, called “He’s Not Dimon to You,” based on the film of the same name prepared by the Anti-Corruption Foundation about property allegedly owned by then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, were held on March 26, 2017 in different cities of Russia. That day, according to various sources, from 36 to 88 thousand people in 97 cities took to the streets. In Moscow - more than during the rally on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012. After the dispersal of the protests on March 26, nine people in three cities became involved in criminal cases. They were charged under Article 318 of the Criminal Code - use of violence against a government official. 1043 people were detained