The Supreme Court released from custody the mother of five children

Her arrest was deemed excessive

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation declared illegal the arrest of a mother of many children, a university teacher (she was one of the first to put shackles on her and so they drove around Moscow) Olga Raslina. The woman was released from jail. This can give hope to many parents who are in jail on charges of non-violent crimes before a court verdict.

Let me remind you of this terrible story. The author of these lines found Olga Raslina in SIZO No. 6 during a check as a member of the PMC of Moscow last summer. The woman said that she has five children (four minors, one of them is seriously ill).

At the same time, at the time of her arrest, she held the position of adviser to the head of the Intellectual Property Department for military-technical cooperation and expertise in the supply of weapons and military equipment of the law enforcement agency, and taught at a university. She was accused of fraud. As she herself believed, the investigation demanded that she be placed in a pre-trial detention center as pressure, because she did not confess. The Presnensky court could not refuse the TFR, and the Moscow City Court recognized Raslina’s detention as lawful. At the same time, he referred to the fact that the father of the children was free.

The most terrible thing in this story is that soon Olga’s husband, a lawyer by profession, was also placed in a pre-trial detention center. As a result, young children were left without parents. They were lucky that their grandmothers were able to take them away, otherwise the children would have been placed in an orphanage. The smallest child is 2 years old (when his mother was imprisoned, he was a year and three months old, and he does not remember her well), a disabled boy is 4 years old (he called his mother from morning to evening, because he is attached to her), a girl is 5 years old (she I cried all the time because I thought that my parents had abandoned her). Older children also took the separation hard.

The highest court stood up for the protection of children. The cassation ruling of May 12, 2023 declared the arrest of a mother of many children illegal. At the same time, the Supreme Court recalled that a preventive measure in the form of detention is chosen as a last resort. Olga was released from the pre-trial detention center (now she is under house arrest).

Perhaps this decision will become a landmark and will allow Moscow judges not to be afraid to refuse the investigation, which is increasingly asking to arrest (including women with young children) for non-violent crimes.