BARNAUL – Anastasiya Zotova, wife of opposition activist Ildar Dadin, who was acquitted by the presidium of the Russian Supreme Court, has filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office of Rubtsovsk, Altai Territory, requesting to check whether the document on his release was lost.
“The ruling of the Russian Supreme Court was sent from Moscow to Barnaul by means of the State Courier Service on February 22. Officer on duty of the service in Barnaul said that this document still hasn’t arrived in Barnaul. A flight from Moscow to Barnaul takes four hours, a journey on the train is over two days, this is why the fact that the document still hasn’t arrived in Barnaul in three days is concerning. I request to check, whether State Courier Service lost the document,” Zotova said, posting her complaint on a social network on Saturday.
On February 22, the Russian Supreme Court’s presidium ruled to release Dadin. “Release Dadin from a penitentiary and acknowledge his right to rehabilitation,” the presidium said in its ruling handed down on Wednesday, after hearing Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev’s recommendation on reopening the legal proceedings in the Dadin case in light of a Russian Constitutional Court judgment.
In December 2015, Dadin was convicted under a new law – Article 212.1 – which made repeated violations of Russia’s strict protest rules a crime.
He was originally jailed for three years – though the sentence was later reduced – for a series of peaceful protests, which often involved standing silently in the street with a sign.
The Russian Constitutional Court on February 10, 2017 said in its decision on the activist’s claim about Article 212.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (repeat violations of the rules governing the organization of rallies, demonstrations and pickets), that the court decisions made on Dadin were subject to revision.
The Constitutional Court found that the contested article did not contradict the Russian Constitution, but recommended that the legislator make adjustments to it.
Dadin was the first and so far the only person convicted for a crime under Article 212.1 of the Russian Criminal Code after its new edition appeared in the Russian Criminal Code in summer 2014. The crime is punishable by up to five years in jail. People who previously committed an administrative violation of the same name (Article 20.2 of the Russian Code of Administrative Violations) more than two times over the course of 180 days are prosecuted in accordance with Article 212.1.
