Bolotnaya Square case

rdf:langString Bolotnaya Square case

rdf:langString The Bolotnaya Square case is a criminal case by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on account of alleged mass riots (article 212 of the Russian Criminal code) and alleged violence against the police (article 318 of the Russian Criminal code) during the "March of the Millions" on May 6, 2012 on the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. The demonstration was one of the biggest protests in Russia since the 1990s. By the number of accused, 37 persons, it is currently the largest criminal case against participants of public demonstrations in modern Russia. The Bolotnaya Square case is largely recognized as politically motivated both internationally and in Russia. The Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin repeatedly stated that "there were no riots in Bolotnaya Square". The Memorial Human Rights Centre recognized the case as politically motivated. The European Court of Human Rights issued numerous verdicts wherein it ruled that in the Bolotnaya Square case Russia violated European Convention on Human Rights. The European Parliament issued resolutions 2013/2667(RSP) of June 13, 2013 and resolution 2014/2628(RSP) of March 13, 2014 on the political nature of the Bolotnaya Square case. Amnesty International recognised the defendants in the case as prisoners of conscience. Overall, 37 people were officially accused, most of them were men and five were women. The majority of them were kept under arrest, several under house arrest, and one escaped abroad. Fearing persecution, several other people, who had not yet been officially accused, left Russia and have been granted asylum in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The case also included a crackdown against the Russian opposition leaders. Houses of Alexey Navalny, Sergey Udaltsov, Kseniya Sobchak, Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin and Pyotr Verzilov were searched. Garry Kasparov and Sergei Guriev left Russia in 2013. The supporters of the arrested created the May 6 Committee, an independent organization set up to conduct its own investigation and defend those charged in connection with the rally. Dozens of prominent musicians and artists publicly supported the prisoners of the Bolotnaya Square case, among them Anti-Flag, Ken Loach, Yuri Shevchuk, Noize MC, Boris Akunin, Dmitry Spirin. On December 19, 2013 a large-scale amnesty was declared in Russia to mark the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution. The amnesty was granted to some 13 defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case, alongside the accused in the two other high-profile political cases, the Pussy Riot group and Greenpeace activists who blocked the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora Sea. In 2014, the remaining defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case who did not fall under the amnesty received prison sentences varying from 2.5 to 4.5 years. By the end of 2018, all of them were released after having served their sentence. After the trial was finished, the prosecution attempted new arrests and charges. In December 2016, a new accused, Dmitry Buchenkov, was detained. He was later put under house arrest, fled Russia and was granted asylum in Lithuania in June 2018. In July 2018, the Russian Ministry of Interior filed lawsuit against several defendants in the Bolotnaya case for the loss by the police of rubber sticks and radio stations. The court ruled to refuse to satisfy the claim. The statute of limitations for the Bolotnaya Square case is ten years, due on 6 May 2022.