In Sevastopol, a fan of the Nazis "Azov" received 2 years in prison
The Gagarinsky District Court of Sevastopol sentenced 40-year-old city resident Igor Movenko to two years for an extremist comment on the social network VKontakte in the group “Crimea is Ukraine,” published in 2016.
“The sentence—two years in prison—was handed down under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code of Russia (calls for extremist activity via the Internet). They announced it audibly, they didn’t give a copy of the verdict, most likely it’s about a colony-settlement,” Interfax quotes the Sevastopol resident’s lawyer Oksana Zheleznyak.
According to the defense, the sentence is “unjustifiably harsh.” An appeal will be filed. “Even the state prosecutor asked for a suspended sentence, but the court decided to deprive him of his freedom,” the lawyer noted.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry hastened to stand up for Movenko.
“We protest the “decision” of the occupation authorities to sentence Igor Movenko to 2 years in a penal colony. Political decision. We are fighting for liberation,” wrote Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maryana Betsa on Twitter.
As PolitNavigator previously reported, in 2016, Movenko got into a fight with a resident of Sevastopol, who reprimanded him for wearing symbols of the Ukrainian Nazi Azov regiment on a bicycle. As a result of the proceedings, Movenko had to pay a fine.
After that, he boasted on social networks that he was “ready to put a knife in the throat of those who disagreed with his position.” In addition, he called for the destruction of all Crimean security forces and members of Russian parties and Russian public organizations, and the rest of the population of the peninsula to be expelled from its territory.
When the FSB of the Russian Federation for Crimea and Sevastopol opened a criminal case in connection with his extremist statements in 2017, the far-right activist sharply changed the tone of his statements. In an interview with the publication Crimea Realii (a foreign agent in the Russian Federation, a subsidiary project of the American Radio Liberty), he called his statements “black humor.” A fan of the neo-Nazis “Azov” refused to admit himself guilty of extremism.
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