In Moscow Basmanny Court punished participants of the protest action against the imprisonment of Chrnobyl Way action participants in Belarus. Six Moscow protestors were sentenced to different terms of arrest, one was fined. (13-MAY-2005)
The protest action was held in front of Belarusian Embassy in the Russian Federation. Its participants demanded from Belarusian authorities to release Belarusian and Ukrainian citizens who were put in jail for participation in Chernobyl Way action in Minsk. The court in the Russian Federation sentenced to jail Dmitry Kokarev, member of “Oborona” movement, Yabloko members Semyon Burd, Vitaliy Reznik and Egor Shalayev and the member of “Going without Putin” movement Vadim Rezvy to 4-6 days of jail. The non-party participant of the action Piotr Karnaukhov was fined 1 000 Russian rubles. The prisoners declared hunger-strike of protest.
The leader of the Yabloko movement Ilya Yashin thusly commented on the court lynching:
— It demonstrates the direction in which the state is moving. Our state decided that the most effective methods of struggle with the opposition are the ones that Lukashenka uses. Now the Russian authorities try to use them in practice. Before that there haven’t been any cases when people were imprisoned for unauthorized picketing.
At the trial the defense lawyer moved for attachment of the video tape confirming that the action participants didn’t resist to the police (the court charged them with that). He also twice solicited for impeachment to the judge, but the petitions were rejected by the court.
