Posts Tagged ‘victory’
The Government Will Pay for Abuse
I won RUR 10,000 (about $300) at Tverskoy District Court yesterday from the Russian government for my illegal 13-day detention at a Dissenters’ March last year. This is the first case when the state is obliged to pay a compensation to an opposition activist arrested at a rally. Of course, the amount is hillarious and I will surely submit an appeal, first to the Moscow City Court and then, if needed, to the European Court for Human Rights.
Happy New Year!
Thank you for reading this blog. I wish all of you a Happy New Year! I hope, it will make the dreams of so many Russians about freedom come true.
For one man, freedom has already come. Vasily Aleksanyan, mortally ill YUKOS’ lawyer, who had been held in custody for years and who the democratic opposition had been campaigning for, was released yesterday. Unfortunately, his HIV and cancer are already at a stage hardly curable. But at least he can now see his family and friends without restrictions. He chose to sacrifice his health (and, it appears, his life) rather than to betray Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev and to sign false statement against them. This is the example many of us should take.
I Won a Case in Court
The Moscow City Court ruled that my 13-days-long detention in May was illegal. Men in plainclothes arrested me while I was walking on the street before a Dissenters’ March planned for May 6. Without explaining anything, they put me and several dozens of other activists in am armored truck and brought us to a police station.
The next day I was sentenced to 13 days in jail for “disobeying police orders”, the sentence was based on controversial and false documents and perjury from an OMON sergeant. Neither testimonies by numerous witnesses, nor photos of my arrest didn’t change the sentence: the judge simply ignored it. Ironically, this farce was taking place at the same time as Dmitry Medvedev was addressing the importance of rule of law in his inaugurational speech.
I started a hunger strike in protest. Police tried to hide my location and denied my attorney to see me. Opposition activists held pickets and painted graffiti in my support. They even organized a celebration of my birthday, which I had to celebrate in jail. After I was released, I spent several days in hospital due to health problems because of the hunger strike.
Now, I’ve been acquitted. However, this doesn’t mean that the story won’t repeat again on a next rally.
