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Moscow Court Convicts 8 for Protest in 2012 Moscow Court Convicts 8 for Protest in 2012
(about 5 hours later)
MOSCOW — A criminal court convicted eight people on Friday for their part in a violent protest ahead of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inauguration in 2012 after a prolonged trial that has become a symbol of the Kremlin’s stifling of political dissent. MOSCOW — Eight people were convicted on Friday of taking part in a violent protest before the inauguration of President Vladimir V. Putin in 2012, after a prolonged trial that became a symbol of the Kremlin’s renewed stifling of political dissent.
Even before the court’s judge read the verdicts, the police detained dozens of people who had gathered outside the courthouse in central Moscow, mindful that the conviction could provoke new outrage and protests against Mr. Putin’s rule. The verdicts came against the backdrop of the political upheaval in Ukraine, which Mr. Putin’s critics here have watched with a mixture of surprise and envy. Even before the judge read the verdicts, the police began detaining dozens of people who had gathered outside the courthouse in central Moscow, mindful that the convictions could provoke new outrage and protests against Mr. Putin’s rule.
Those gathered outside — who included prominent anti-Putin figures like Aleksei A. Navalny and two members of the punk protest movement Pussy Riot — held or hung banners calling for acquittals, and they chanted “shame” as the police seized people and ushered them to waiting buses. By the time the judge, Natalya Nikishina, began reading the verdicts, at least 50 had been detained, a number that continued to rise as she continued. The verdicts came amid the political upheaval in Ukraine, which Mr. Putin’s critics here have watched with a mixture of surprise and envy, even as Russian officials have denounced it as an attempted coup by radicals.
The eight convicted — seven men and one woman — were accused of assaulting police officers during a protest on May 6, 2012, the night before Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term after four years as prime minister and de facto leader of the country. After announcing the verdicts, the judge, Natalya Nikishina, suspended the rest of the hearing, postponing the sentencing until at least Monday. That means the sentences will be read after the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which officials here have gone to great lengths to portray as a symbol of a new, modern Russia.
Hundreds were arrested that night, but a small group of 29 faced the most serious charges of rioting and assault for throwing rocks or chunks of asphalt, though in many cases, their lawyers argued that the evidence of individual attacks on police officers remained murky. By the end of the day, at least 213 people had been detained by the police and loaded into buses, according to OVD-Info, a website that documents cases against political prisoners. A police spokesman told the news agency Interfax that those detained had violated the public order, but other protesters said the police had seemed to single out mostly young men for arrest at random. Most were detained for several hours and then released.
One of those convicted Friday, Yaroslav G. Belousov, was shown in a video throwing nothing more harmful than a lemon. The defendants could serve five to six years in prison. The arrests and the suspension of the hearing appeared to be an effort to head off a mass protest that had been planned for Friday night in the square abutting the Kremlin — one that could, as in Ukraine, overshadow the remaining days of the Sochi Olympics. Although Mr. Putin and his aides maintain that they exert no control over the judiciary, it is widely believed here that prosecutions are manipulated for political ends.
The prosecution became known as the Bolotnaya case after the square across the Moscow River from the Kremlin where the protests and violence took place. “I really hope that the sentence that is to be read will be a sentence for these defendants and not for the Maidan,” said Sergei Panchenko, a lawyer for one of those convicted, Stepan Zimin, referring to Independence Square in Kiev, which has been the center of the protests in Ukraine.
Along with the trial of Pussy Riot and the criminal charges against Mr. Navalny, who was convicted last year and then given a suspended sentence, the cases reflect the hardening, conservative turn of Mr. Putin’s Kremlin over the last two years, which has succeeded in at least tempering the popular unrest that followed parliamentary elections in December 2011 and Mr. Putin’s re-election in March 2012. “I really hope that the people — or the person, who we all know, the one person who makes decisions for us — will have sense to issue a punishment having not been guided by his conceptions about what’s happening in a different country,” Mr. Panchenko added.
Within an hour, the judge suspended the reading of the verdict and announced that she would continue on Monday, announcing the sentences then. That means the final judgment will come after the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which officials here have presented as a symbol of a new, modern Russia. The eight convicted on Friday — seven men and one woman — went on trial last June and were charged with “massing riot” or assaulting police officers during a protest on May 6, 2012, the night before Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term after four years as prime minister. Hundreds were arrested, but a group of 29 faced the most serious charges for throwing rocks or chunks of asphalt, though lawyers and human rights advocates argued that the evidence remained murky.
“We hope it will be a light sentence,” a lawyer for the defendants, Dmitri V. Agranovski, said after the suspension, noting that some of the defendants have been in detention since their arrests. Another of those convicted, Yaroslav G. Belousov, was shown in a video throwing a lemon, but it was not clear if it struck anyone.
The prosecution became known as the Bolotnaya case, after the name of the square across the Moscow River from the Kremlin where the protest took place. Along with the prosecution of members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot and of Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption blogger who was convicted last year and given a suspended sentence, the Bolotnaya case reflected a hardening of Mr. Putin’s policies since returning to the presidency.
Some of the original 29 await trial, and some received amnesty in December as part of what many saw as an effort by the Kremlin to deflect criticism before the Olympics.
To the dismay of Mr. Putin’s critics, the Kremlin’s tactics — alternating between crackdown and selective leniency — have largely muted the groundswell of popular unrest that followed parliamentary elections in December 2011 and Mr. Putin’s re-election in March 2012.
“The Bolotnaya case is a stark example of political manipulation of justice in Russia,” Tanya Lokshina, the program director in Russia for Human Rights Watch, said on Friday in a statement that criticized the prosecution, the trial and the verdicts. “This disproportionate prosecution appears to be aimed at discouraging people from participating in public protests.”
Even so, several hundred people gathered outside the courthouse on Friday to await the verdict. They included opposition party leaders, Mr. Navalny and two members of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina. The two were released in December after spending two years in prison on hooliganism charges for performing a protest song in a Moscow cathedral, and they have since continued a campaign against Mr. Putin’s rule.
Those gathered outside held or hung banners calling for the release of the eight defendants. Their chants of “freedom” and “shame” when the police moved to make arrests could be heard inside the courthouse as the verdicts were read. Ekaterina Barabanova, whose husband, Andrei Barabanova, was one of the defendants, was detained by the police but was released minutes later after a lawyer for her husband intervened.
“I wanted him to be home — that all of the guys would be home,” she said after the verdicts were announced. She lamented the delay in the sentencing, saying it appeared that the entire case had been dragged out. “But after today, it’s become ever less comprehensible.”