OMON hurried to a physicist for a year – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The Basmanny Court appointed physicist Andrey Zayakin, co-founder of Dissernet, a ban on certain actions in a criminal case under Part 1 of Art. 282.3 of the Criminal Code (financing of extremist activities). Andrei Zayakin is charged with last year’s transfer in the amount of 1 thousand rubles. in favor of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK; included in the register of NPO-foreign agents and recognized as an extremist organization whose activities are prohibited in Russia; liquidated), carried out the next day after the entry into force of the court decision on recognizing the organization as extremist. A physicist can face up to eight years in prison.

The co-founder of the Dissernet project, physicist Andrei Zayakin, who collaborates with Novaya Gazeta, was detained in Moscow. As his lawyer Mikhail Biryukov told Kommersant, on Sunday they came to Mr. Zayakin with a search, and then they took him to the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR), where he was interrogated as a suspect and an accused. “The detention of Andrei Zayakin was accompanied by a whole circus performance,” the website says. “Disserneta”.- OMON organized an “assault” of his apartment with a landing on the balcony of the second floor – with a simultaneous “attack” from the stairwell, with broken windows and doors of the apartment. All computer equipment, telephones, disks, etc. were confiscated. Andrei was subjected to many hours of interrogation and spent the night in the isolation ward.”

The physicist is charged with financing extremist activities – Part 1 of Art. 282.3 of the Criminal Code, under which he could face up to eight years in prison. As Mr. Biryukov explained, we are talking about the transfer of 1 thousand rubles. FBK on August 5, 2021 — the day after the decision to recognize the organization as extremist with the prohibition of its activities came into force.

On Monday, the investigation asked the court to choose a preventive measure for the scientist in the form of a ban on certain actions until October 8, 2022. Toward evening, the Basmanny Court granted the petition. Now the physicist is not allowed to leave the premises from 20:00 to 8:00, communicate with witnesses in the case, send and receive mail, use the Internet.

According to the lawyer, the case against Andrei Zayakin was opened on August 8, 2022 in the Main Investigation Department of the TFR. The physicist himself, according to Mikhail Biryukov, did not know about this.

When asked by Kommersant whether it was a one-time payment or a regular one, which was debited automatically due to the settings, Mikhail Biryukov replied that he had not asked his client about this.

“While we do not have a position, it was all a surprise for him and for me,” he told Kommersant. “I attribute this to his social activities in the first place. Today detained Leonid Gozman (recognized as a foreign agent by the media; he is charged with Article 13.48 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for publicly identifying the USSR with Nazi Germany.— “b”), before that – Evgeny Roizman (accused of discrediting the armed forces under part 1 of article 280.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.— “b”). A new wave of initiation of administrative and criminal cases against the most prominent public figures and politicians has begun. According to the lawyer, in addition to Andrei Zayakin, several more names appear in the case file.

Legally, there is nothing strange in the fact that a case was opened against Andrei Zayakin a year after the donation, since the statute of limitations for the incriminated article, which relates to serious crimes, is ten years, human rights activist Anastasia Burakova recalls: and the recognition of this organization as extremist has not yet entered into force, and, of course, the absurdity of the imputed act and the politically motivated nature of the persecution are obvious.”

Human rights activists note that they became aware of the first similar criminal case on August 15, and do not rule out a series of such charges.

The lawyer of the “First Department” Valeria Vetoshkina (included in the register of foreign agents) also does not find it strange that the case was initiated a year later: “I think that the security forces have a lot of various kinds of criminal cases in store that you can get out of your pocket at any time.” She recalls that even before the decision came into force, FBK changed the payment system in such a way that user payments were as anonymous as possible. However, Mikhail Biryukov said that the proof of the transfer was an extract from Andrey Zayakin’s account in Sberbank.

Anna Vasilyeva, Kira Heifetz, Uliana Mironova