Lawmaking

In late December, the State Duma adopted, the Federation Council approved, and the president of Russia signed a law amending Article 15.3 of the federal law “On Information, Information Technology and Information Protection.” Now, not only the information containing “calls for mass riots and extremist activities” (previous version) but also the information “defending and (or) justifying extremist activities, including terrorist activities” will be subject to extrajudicial blocking upon request of the Prosecutor General's Office. Informational materials from organizations banned under the law “On Countering Extremist Activities” or “On Countering Terrorism” and “information allowing access” to these materials will be blocked as well. In addition, the amendments provide for blocking false reporting on acts of terrorism and advertisements for the sale of forged documents. We oppose the very mechanism of extrajudicial blocking for online materials since it leads to selective enforcement and law enforcement abuse. Expanding the already vague list of criteria that lead to a decision on access restrictions will only aggravate the situation further. Thus, for example, any academic research on political radicalism or any public discussion that problematizes this phenomenon can potentially be interpreted as “justification” of extremist or terrorist activity. We should also add that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has repeatedly pointed out that the Russian legislation on Internet blocking was inconsistent with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and its enforcement was arbitrary.

Also in December, the president introduced a new draft law “On Citizenship” in the State Duma. The current law stipulates that some crimes of an extremist and terrorist nature, if committed, are equivalent to reporting deliberately false information when applying for Russian citizenship and lead to the revocation of the decision to grant the citizenship, but the new draft law brings some changes to this procedure. It introduces committing certain crimes as a specific basis for termination of citizenship and expands the list of such crimes. In particular, the list is expected to include articles on banditry, organizing mass riots, treason, and disclosure of state secrets as well as articles related to drug trafficking. Decisions to revoke one’s citizenship, made by the agencies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will need the approval of the president of Russia. While the revocation based on reporting false information must take into account the stability of a citizen’s legal relationship with the state and must be issued no more than 10 years after the citizenship was granted, the bill includes no such reservations for those who committed the crimes indicated above.

In early December, deputies of the New People faction, following their colleagues from A Just Russia, submitted to the State Duma a bill changing the regulation of the activities undertaken by “foreign agents.” The proposal amends the laws “On Mass Media,” “On Measures of Influence on Persons Involved in Violations of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, Rights and Freedoms of Citizens of the Russian Federation” and “On Non-Commercial Organizations.” According to the bill’s authors, the legislation must also include the concept of “foreign principal” and recognize as “foreign agents” only persons or organizations who act on the instructions of either a “foreign principal” or a person financed by a “foreign principal.” The deputies also believe that the Ministry of Justice must start the process by issuing a notification or a warning to prospective “foreign agents” and then go to court unless this person or entity eliminates the violations within three months. The proposal also attempts to specify the list of actions covered by the concept of “political activity,” to stop regarding the monetary portions of awards approved by the government as foreign funding, and to reduce the reporting workload for individuals recognized as “foreign agents.”

The proposed amendments, from our point of view, are contradictory and not fully considered. Their authors are entangled in several parallel legal mechanisms existing in the Russian legislation for NGOs, individuals and the media recognized as “foreign agents, while completely forgetting about unregistered public associations. In general, such ideas as introducing a three-month period to eliminate violations, judicial control over recognizing organizations and citizens as “foreign agents,” clarifying the criteria for political activity and the public communication procedures for individuals, and other similar steps deserve attention. However, in our opinion, even in this more refined form, this legislation disproportionately restricts freedom of speech and association.

Practice of the European Court of Human Rights

In December, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued three judgments related to the enforcement of anti-extremist legislation in Russia.

On December 7, the Strasbourg court found that the prosecution against activist Maxim Yefimov under Article 282 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (incitement to hatred or enmity) and the subsequent liquidation of the Youth Human Rights Group (Molodezhnaya pravozashchitnaya gruppa, MPG) of Karelia, of which he was the leader, violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 11 (freedom of association) of the European Convention on Human Rights. A criminal case against Yefimov was initiated in 2012 in connection with an anti-clerical note he had posted online. According to the ECHR, such interference with his freedom of expression was not necessary in a democratic society. The liquidation of the MPG of Karelia for failure to remove Yefimov’s name as its founder once he was added to the Rosfinmonitoring List of Terrorists and Extremists had no legal basis at all, according to the Court’s ruling. Having come to this conclusion, the Strasbourg court criticized the norms of the Russian anti-extremist legislation, which do not allow challenging on the merits one’s placement on the Rosfinmonitoring List and suggest liquidating an organization merely on the formal basis of its founder’s inclusion on the List.

On December 14, the ECHR published a ruling on a joint complaint by Scientologists against several decisions of Russian courts recognizing L. Ron Hubbard's books as extremist, refusing to re-register the Church of Scientology of Moscow and ordering its liquidation. The ECHR ruled that the decisions of the Russian courts violated the applicants' rights guaranteed by Article 9 (freedom of religion), 10 and 11 of the European Convention. According to the ECHR, the banning of books authored by L. Ron Hubbard was not necessary in a democratic society, and the dissolution of the church on formal grounds was a disproportionate measure.

On the same day, the ECHR found the 2009 verdict against editor Yuri Mukhin under Article 280 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activities using the media) to violate Article 10 of the Convention. Mukhin had been punished for having published an anti-Semitic letter from a reader in his newspaper, the Duel. The court found that the liquidation of the Duel for disseminating extremist materials after two warnings also violated Article 10. According to the ECHR, the Russian courts that reviewed the case failed to provide sufficient grounds for Mukhin’s guilty verdict under Article 280 of the Criminal Code, and his suspended sentence was a disproportionate punishment. The termination of the Duel was based on formal grounds, and, according to the ECHR, the Russian courts were unable to convincingly demonstrate the proportionality of such a harsh measure.

Sanctions for Oppositional Activities and Criticism of the Authorities

In December, a Chelyabinsk resident was sentenced to a fine of 300 thousand rubles under Article 282.2 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (participating in the activities of an extremist organization). According to the investigation’s version, upheld by the court, he was a member of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and helped his party comrades to prepare a sledgehammer attack against the Czechoslovak Legion monument and an arson attack against the Leninsky District Prosecutor's Office in Chelyabinsk in the spring of 2020. Presumably, the offender’s name is Ivan Alekseev. We view as inappropriate both the ban against the NBP and the sanctions against activists for participating in the organization. The attempts to destroy the monument and set the prosecutor's office on fire should have been qualified under other articles of the Criminal Code.

The Kislovodsk City Court, at its visiting session in Yessentuki, issued sentences against the leaders of the protest movement that took place in Ingushetia in 2018–2019. Akhmed Barakhoev, Musa Malsagov and Malsag Uzhakhov were sentenced to nine years in a minimum-security colony under Article 33 Part 3 and Article 318 part 2 of the Criminal Code (organizing violence against a representative of the authorities motivated by political enmity in connection with the discharge of their official duties) and Article 282.1 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (organizing an extremist community). Uzhakhov was also found guilty under Article 33 Part 3 and Article 239 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (creating a non-profit organization associated with inducement of individuals to commit other unlawful deeds based on political enmity), and Barakhoev – under Article 239 Part 3 of the Criminal Code (participating in such an organization). Ismail Nalgiev, Bagaudin Khautiev and Barakh Chemurziev were sentenced to eight years in a penal colony under Article 33 Part 3 and Article 318 Part 2 of the Criminal Code as well as Article 282.1 Part 2 (participating in an extremist community). Zarifa Sautieva was sentenced on the same charges to seven and a half years in a penal colony.

According to the investigation, in 2018, the offenders, united by their political enmity towards President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov of the Republic of Ingushetia, created an extremist community, which disseminated in the media and on social networks the calls for participation in protests held without permits, organized such actions, created a “shadow government” and intended to achieve the resignation of Ingushetia’s leadership in order to establish a government under their control in the republic. The investigation also argued that, during the rally of March 27, 2019, they deliberately incited participants to violence against government officials

We consider the verdict against the activists from Ingushetia inappropriate both under Article 282.1 and Article 318 of the Criminal Code. We have no reason to believe either that the activists had planned in advance to provoke violence, or that appeals they made (whether planned or voiced spontaneously) were intended to incite the audience to violence. Moreover, we have no reason to interpret peaceful political criticism and organizing peaceful assemblies as socially dangerous acts committed out of hatred. Thus, on the one hand, the association of activists cannot be regarded as an extremist community, that is, as a group of persons formed for committing extremist crimes. On the other hand, their calls cannot be interpreted as actions to instigate violence. As far as we know, the convicted activists never initiated the clashes with the police at all – on the contrary, they tried to stop the violence.

In late December, investigative actions in the case of Alexei Navalny and his supporters took place in several regions of Russia. The courts imposed preventive measures in the form of the bans on certain actions on Xenia Fadeeva, Zakhar Sarapulov and Vadim Ostanin, the ex-heads of Navalny's headquarters in Tomsk, Irkutsk and Barnaul. They have been charged with participating in an extremist community (Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code; Fadeeva, a deputy of the Tomsk City Duma, faces charges under Part 3 of this article that qualifies an action as performed “with the use of their official status”) and participating in a non-profit organization that infringes upon the liberties and rights of individuals (Article 239 Part 3). Yegor Butakov, the former head of the local headquarters, was questioned in Arkhangelsk; the court has also put him under a preventive restriction not involving imprisonment.

It is worth reminding that the decision to recognize the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Citizens Rights Defense Fund (FZPG) and the Alexei Navalny Headquarters network as extremist organizations was made on June 9, 2021 and entered into force on August 4. We believe that there were no legal grounds to ban Navalny's organizations and to impose sanctions for involvement in their activities. More information about our position can be found here.

In early December, the All-Tatar Public Center (Vsetatarsky Obschestvennyi Tsentr, VTOTs) was fined 250 thousand rubles under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (incitement to hatred or enmity). The claim was based on the draft address to the State Council of Tatarstan delivered by Abdullazyan Zalyalov, a member of the VTOTS Presidium, at a rally on October 15, 2021. An expert examination, after reviewing the address, found the "possible presence of a hostile context" regarding the Russians, as well as contrasting the Russians and the Tatars as "the state-forming people" and "the colonized people." The draft address noted that, by alluding to the state-forming status of the Russian people, the amendment to Article 68 Part 1 of the Russian Constitution adopted in 2020 raises the question of the status of non-Russian “primarily indigenous” peoples, and that the State Council of Tatarstan should have determined the status of the Tatar people when ratifying the law on Constitutional amendments. We believe that this address provided no grounds for proceedings under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. It shows no intent to incite ethnic hatred. The document merely criticizes the historical colonial policy of the Russian Empire and modern supporters of the idea of mono-ethnic Russia and contains peaceful calls to recognize the state-forming status of the Tatar people in Tatarstan. Zalyalov separately noted in the address that granting the Russian people the state-forming status was also commendable, specifically for their achievements in creating the Russian Federation.

In late December, a court in Chelyabinsk terminated the case initiated under the same article against local resident Alexander Levanov due to the lack of corpus delicti. Levanov had left a comment “We remember you; you are under cops’ protection,” under a video on VKontakte. We welcome the decision of the Chelyabinsk court to discontinue the case. In our opinion, law enforcement officers should not be considered a vulnerable social group protected by anti-extremist legislation and, as the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly pointed out, should be extremely tolerant of criticism, unless it involves a real threat of violence. Levanov’s words contained no calls for violence.

We consider several people inappropriately sanctioned under Article 20.3 Part 1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (demonstration of prohibited symbols). A number of cases concerned the use of Nazi symbols as a means of political criticism rather than to advocate Nazi ideology.

Thus, in mid-December, a court in Moscow punished Pussy Riot participants Maria Alyokhina and Basmanny District municipal deputy Lucy Shtein. Alyokhina published a portrait of the President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in a swastika-decorated frame in 2015. Shtein posted on Facebook in 2018 a collage with her own photo with a superimposed cap decorated by Nazi attributes and the caption “Lucy Shtein Deputy Fascist.” This image is a preview of the video “Moscow Deputy Lucy Shtein Raises Money for Ukrainian Nazis,” which criticized her activities, published on December 25, 2018 on the YouTube channel “Conversations by the Russian Stove.”

In Omsk, local opposition leader Richard Roman King was fined 2,000 rubles under the same article in late December. He posted an image on VKontakte that included a film still of Nazis in SS uniforms taking away a girl prisoner next to a photograph of Russian Interior Ministry officers detaining a girl protester. The caption on top of the image read “Do you feel the difference? Not anymore...”

Other cases under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses related to the display of the symbols of organizations that were recognized as extremist, in our opinion, without sufficient grounds.

Ivan Kislitsin, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was fined 2,000 rubles in Omsk back in late November for posting on VKontakte a concert recording of the song “And the Battle Is Going Again” (I vnov prodolzhaetsya boy) by the punk band Grazhdanskaya Oborona with a visible flag of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and for subsequently sharing archival photographs of the band’s leading singer Yegor Letov from the public page of the Other Russia of E. V. Limonov. According to law enforcement agencies, the emblem of the Other Russia of E. V. Limonov (a hand grenade commonly known as “limonka” crossed by a lightning bolt) is “confusingly similar” to the logo of the Limonka newspaper, formerly published by the NBP. Since we view the ban against the NBP as inappropriate, sanctions for displaying its symbols are, in our opinion, inappropriate as well. The symbols of the Other Russia of E. V. Limonov clearly differ from the well-known symbols of the NBP, and the law provides no punishment for displaying “symbols similar to those of an extremist organization.” Finally, the purpose of displaying the symbols was not to advertise the activities of the banned NBP but to disseminate materials about musician Yegor Letov, who had been a member of this party.

Activist Rostislav Pavlischev was placed under arrest for ten days in late December in Rostov-on-Don for his three posts on Instagram mentioning Navalny, the banned FBK and the Smart Voting. Apparently, the posts contained the FBK symbols.

Notably, a court in Cheboksary canceled the fine imposed in November on Semyon Kochkin, the ex-head of Navalny's local headquarters, under Article 13.15 Part 2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (mentioning an extremist organization without specifying its status) for 15 tweets he made back in 2019, which mentioned the FBK and the Navalny headquarters in Cheboksary (not yet recognized as extremist organizations at that time). Kochkin's case was sent to the court of the first instance for review, and the latter returned the materials to the police. We generally believe that Article 13.15 Part 2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses can only be applied to mass media but not to social network users.

In December we also recorded several cases under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (mass distribution of extremist materials) in connection with sharing the video “Let’s Remind Crooks and Thieves about Their Manifesto-2002,” created by supporters of Alexei Navalny and banned in 2013. The video merely lists a number of unrealized campaign promises made by United Russia in its 2002 manifesto and calls to vote for any party other than United Russia. The Yoshkar-Ola City Court of Mari El fined 1,000 rubles the following individuals, apparently, for the distribution of the same video: Farit Gizatullin in late October, Dmitry Chemodanov in November, and Sergei Chizhov in early December. A similar case against lawyer Nikolai Munsky was dismissed by a court in Krasnoyarsk.

We also became aware in December of seven recent administrative cases for “disrespect for the authorities” on the Internet. In most cases, the claims of law enforcement agencies related to statements about Vladimir Putin, less often about employees of the government and law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, the fine imposed in November for a post criticizing the traffic police was overturned by a higher court in December. We believe that sanctions against activists and opposition members under Article 20.1 Parts 3-5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses are aimed at suppressing criticism of the authorities.

On December 28 and 29, the Supreme Court and the Moscow City Court satisfied the claims of the Prosecutor's Office to liquidate the International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Centre (HRC). The claims against both organizations were related to violations of labeling requirements for the materials distributed by “foreign agent” NPOs. The prosecutorial claim also cited a psycholinguistic study carried out by the Center for Sociocultural Expertise, that the materials of the Memorial Human Rights Center “contain linguistic and psychological signs of justifying the activities of participants in international terrorist and extremist organizations,” According to the expert opinion, the materials of the center also “deny the facts established by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation that have come into force, forming an opinion that they were not legal or legally binding.” The incriminating material in question is the list of political prisoners (Memorial has been maintaining it since 2008 as part of its program to support defendants in the criminal cases they view as politically motivated) and information about these cases posted on the center's website.

On December 25, Roskomnadzor also blocked the website of the independent human rights media project OVD-Info, a partner of the Memorial HRC also recognized as a “foreign agent,” and issued an order for the social networks to block the project's accounts. The agency’s actions followed the decision by the Lukhovitsky District Court of the Moscow Region, which had ruled to recognize the information contained on the OVD-Info website and social network pages as prohibited from distribution on the territory of Russia; the information was allegedly aimed at justifying the activities of extremist and terrorist associations and justified the actions of their members and other people convicted of extremist and terrorist crimes. However, the court decision provides no specific details – it contains only brief characteristics of several OVD-Info materials with references to the expert opinion available in the materials of the case.

In our opinion, the materials of Memorial HRC and OVD-Info contain no signs of justifying extremism and terrorism. We believe that by making such claims against human rights organizations, Russian law enforcement agencies are trying to silence the uncomfortable questions arising from dubious bans against organizations not involved in violence or incitement to hatred that could lead to violence or discrimination or from other anti-extremist sanctions that we view as inappropriate. Disagreement with the position of law enforcement agencies or courts over their decisions to recognize someone as a terrorist or an extremist by no means implies support for violence or an ideology of hatred or any other ideology that persons involved in criminal cases might follow.

Sanctions for “Rehabilitation of Nazism” and Debates over Historical Memory

In December, we learned of two sentences for uploading photographs of Nazis to the Immortal Regiment website.

Sergei Sakharov, a resident of the Tomsk Region, received a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 200 thousand rubles under Article 354.1 Part 1 and Part 2 Paragraph “c” of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism on the Internet). According to the court, Sakharov uploaded Goebbels' photographs to the website for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021.

In Vladivostok, a court sentenced Alexei Shulgin to ten months of corrective labor with a 15% state deduction from his wages under Article 354.1 Part 3 of the Criminal Code (public dissemination of information about Russia’s days of military glory or memorable dates associated with the defense of the Fatherland expressing clear disrespect for society). He uploaded a photo of Hitler to the Immortal Regiment website in May 2020.

Suspects under Article 354.1 Part 1 of the Criminal Code in December included Artyom Samarin from Izhevsk, who also uploaded a photo of Hitler to the website in 2020.

We doubt the validity of qualifying an act of uploading photographs of Nazi criminals to the Immortal Regiment website under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code. We believe that these actions, in and of themselves, don’t constitute justification of Nazi crimes, dissemination of deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War, or dissemination of any information about the days of military glory. In most cases, these images were not accompanied by any statements that approved of or denied Nazi crimes.

The Moscow City Court sentenced 19-year-old student Matvei Yuferov to four years in prison in late December under Article 354.1 Part 4 of the Criminal Code for urinating on the portrait of a World War II veteran; a video of the incident was posted on his Instagram story. In Volgograd, a 54-year-old local resident was charged under Article 242 Part 3 Paragraph “b” of the Criminal Code (illegal production or public demonstration of pornographic materials committed using information-telecommunication networks) and Article 354.1 Part 3 of the Criminal Code for posting on Odnoklassniki a pornographic collage that included a photograph of a veteran with the Order of the Patriotic War. Alexei Chervyakov was detained and placed under house arrest in Smolensk; he was charged under Article 354.1 Part 4 of the Criminal Code. In his comments to a VKontakte post about a graffiti portrait of a veteran on a school building wall, Chervyakov stated that he opposed the cult of war and the “victory madness,” believed that only the “scum” and “psychopaths” were capable of killing their fellow humans, and that “making heroes out of them is immoral.”

We believe that all three actions could be perceived as offensive and immoral, especially by veterans and their relatives. However, in these cases, we consider the prosecution under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code inappropriate. Neither Yuferov nor Chervyakov nor the unnamed Volgograd resident promoted violence, hatred or discrimination. As for protecting abstract objects – such as days of military glory, memorable dates, or symbols of military glory (the latter, by the way, are not even specified in Russian legislation) – from criticism, it is unclear why people should be criminally prosecuted for this purpose. It is worth reminding that in General Comment No. 34 to Article 19 (Freedoms of opinion and expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee expresses its concern about laws on such actions as, in particular, disrespect for flags and symbols, and also states that “laws should not provide for more severe penalties solely on the basis of the identity of the person that may have been impugned.” Issues related tо protecting the honor and dignity of veterans, as well as other persons, should, in our opinion, be considered in civil proceedings. In addition, Yuferov's actions clearly constitute disorderly conduct and could be qualified under Article 20.1 Code of Administrative Offenses (disorderly conduct).

In late December, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Murmansk received an administrative claim from the Murmansk Regional Prosecutor requesting to recognize Agnessa Khaykara’s book Unknown Northern History [Neizvestnaya severnaya istoriya] as extremist material. Under the terms of the governor's grant for the book’s publication part of its print run was intended for libraries but seized by the FSB in December 2020.

Psychological and linguistic examination of the publication was conducted by experts Natalia Kryukova and Alexander Tarasov of the Center for Sociocultural Expertise. The expert opinion pointed out that Khaykara's book included “negative information about the actions of the Russians,” and “literary images and statements” where “a person or group of persons is negatively assessed based on ethnicity or belonging to a social group,” contains a positive assessment of hostile actions against the Russians; and negative assessment of the actions, deeds and behavior of “representatives of the Russian people and individual personalities toward the Finnish and Norwegian people.” From the point of view of experts, the book’s content can form in its readers “distorted biased notions” regarding the Russians, the Finns and the Norwegians and contribute to the incitement of hostility towards them.

We are familiar with the text of the book and believe that there are no grounds for recognizing it as extremist. Тhis historical and ethnographic study by an enthusiast, focuses on the fate of Norwegians and Finns who moved to the Kola Peninsula in the 19th century at the invitation of the Russian government to develop undeveloped territories. An original ethnic, cultural and religious community arose on the peninsula but was completely destroyed during the years of Stalinist terror, and most of its people were physically destroyed in the purges – whole families of local Finns and Norwegians were arbitrarily sentenced to capital punishment or long terms of imprisonment, exiled to uninhabitable territories, and so on. Khaykara describes these events in her book based on official documents and stories of the settlers’ descendants including those of her own relatives; ten people in her family suffered in the purges. The book contains no xenophobic or anti-government statements – it would be strange to expect anything else given that Khaykara, a well-known and respected public figure in the region, spent 17 years working in the regional Duma. The principal message of Neizvestnaya severnaya istoriya is that historical memory must be preserved.

Persecution against Religious Organizations and Believers

Jehovah's Witnesses

Prosecutions against Jehovah's Witnesses charged with participation in the activities of local religious organizations banned as extremist continued in December. We believe that these bans had no legal basis.

According to the information available to us, at least seven sentences against eleven Jehovah's Witnesses were passed in December:

We received information in December that at least seven additional Jehovah's Witnesses have become suspects or defendants:

Muslims

At least two people were convicted in December of involvement in Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic movement recognized in Russia as an extremist organization. In Volgograd, a local resident Mikhail Kolotilin was sentenced to three years in prison under Article 282.2 Part 1 of the Criminal Code. An unnamed resident of the Voronezh Region was sentenced in the Apsheronsky District of Krasnodar Krai to seven years in a penal colony under Parts 1.1 and 2 of Article 282.2. Tablighi Jamaat advocates fundamentalist Islam, but this movement was never implicated in any calls for violence, and therefore we view sanctions against its supporters as inappropriate.

In late December, a court in Moscow found eight citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan guilty of participation in the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic party recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. Marifjon Mamadaliev and Ikbolzhon Sultonov were sentenced to 16 and 18 years in a penal colony under Article 205.5 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (organizing the activities of a terrorist organization). Kamaldin Abdullaev, Farhojon Kimsanov, Marufjon Malikov, Ikromiddin Tukhtasinov, Gulomzhon Kholdarov and Azizbek Kholmatov were found guilty under Article 205.5 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (participating in the activities of a terrorist organization); their sentences range from 11 to 12 years behind bars. We view banning Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist organization and charging its members under “anti-terrorist” articles of the criminal code solely on the basis of their party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.) as inappropriate since this party was never implicated in any terrorist attacks.

In late December, we found out that a criminal case was opened in the Vladimir Region against a 22-year-old resident of the region under Article 205.6 of the Criminal Code (failure to report a crime). According to the investigation, in October 2020, a citizen of an unspecified Central Asia country residing in the Komi Republic posted on his VKontakte page a number of statements justifying the murder of French teacher Samuel Pati by a radical Islamist. A year later, in October 2021, he told the resident of the Vladimir Region about his posts, but the latter failed to inform an FSB officer about this when questioned. We believe that requiring citizens, under the threat of criminal liability, to independently identify signs of a crime in statements made by third parties is inappropriate. Unlike activities directly related to carrying out acts of terror, which obviously represent exceptional public danger, statements, even dangerous ones, can be interpreted differently by different audience members, including as not posing any threat to the security of the state and society.

In December, we recorded several cases of prosecution under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for distributing Islamic materials on the Internet. Back in October, the Yoshkar-Ola City Court of Mari El fined Ruslan Zakharov 1,500 rubles because his VKontakte page was found to contain a video about Islam identical to the video that was banned on April 7, 2011. We can’t identify the video in question with certainty, but, with a high degree of probability, it was the Miracles of the Quran, recognized as extremist by the Nefteyugansk City Court and included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials under No. 873. We found no calls to violence, incitement to hatred, or discriminatory statements in this video. The film speaks about other religions in an emphatically respectful tone. Nevertheless, Russian courts punished citizens for disseminating the video on multiple occasions, including in Mari El.

The Gudermes City Court of the Chechen Republic fined local resident Adam Saiev one thousand rubles in late November under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for posting on VKontakte “A Hadith of the Prophet,” a song by Chechen songwriter Timur Mutsuraev. In its ruling, the court referred to Item 2793 of the Federal List of Extremist Materials that includes Mutsurayev's song “Ummah.” However, “A Hadith of the Prophet” is not identical to the banned song. It is not included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials and, in our opinion, contains no signs of extremism; it recounts one of the hadiths about the Prophet Muhammad mourning the impending decline of the Ummah.

In early December, the Laishevsky District Court of the Republic of Tatarstan recognized the following materials as extremist: the first volume of the Interpretation of the Holy Quran by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Nasir as-Sa'di translated by Elmir Kuliev, one of the main Sunni collections of hadiths Sahih al-Bukhari as summarized by 15^th Century imam al-Zubaidi, and Bulugh Al-Maram by al-Asqalani – a collection of 14^th and 15^th Century hadiths translated by Kuliev.

In our opinion, attempts to prohibit hadith collections, including the authoritative Sahih al-Bukhari, constitute an obvious mistake of the authorities, which discredits them in the eyes of Muslims. As we have repeatedly pointed out, modern notions of tolerance are not applicable to medieval Islamic literature, since it describes the era of religious wars and reflects the attitudes of that era. The ideological orientation of translations and modern commentaries on Islamic doctrinal literature still remains a concern; however, the translations and comments to all the Hadith collections reviewed by the court are, in our opinion, quite neutral and cannot serve as a basis for recognizing these publications as extremist.

Tafsir as-Sa’di, written in 1923–25, indeed contains repeated direct calls for an aggressive war against non-believers; however, it is questionable whether such appeals, made a century ago, constitute sufficient grounds for modern publishers of religious literature to refrain from printing the Russian translation of this authoritative interpretation of the Quran. In general, we believe that the authorities should address not the materials per se but the actions of propaganda purveyors who use a variety of instruments, including religious literature, to justify xenophobic violence in the modern world.

Notably, other courts had previously prohibited a selection of quotes on jihad from al-Bukhari hadiths and a different edition of the first volume of Tafsir as-Sa’di.