The criminal case against student Kirill Martyushev was initiated at the end of February 2022. On the day the military operation began, he created a Telegram channel, to which about 40 people subscribed. There, he published, among other things, a video from an anti-war rally in the central square of the city. The police officers who detained Mr. Martyushev there took him to the department to draw up a protocol for participating in an unsanctioned rally (Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). In the department, Kirill Martyushev, according to his lawyer Pavel Rusnakov, “spent more than five hours,” and when he was released, he recorded a 58-second “circle” in Telegram for his mother.
The student criticized the circumstances of his detention and “briefly mentioned the police and the electric chair,” the defender explained to Kommersant.
The Tyumen citizen also sent the “circle” to his Telegram channel, where he was discovered by employees of the department for countering extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Center “E”). The security forces regarded the phrase about the electric chair as extremist, calling for violence against law enforcement officers. As part of the initiated case, the student was arrested.
Pavel Rusnakov believes that the only evidence of the principal’s guilt available in the case file – a psychological and linguistic examination – “contains gross violations”: “There is only the opinion of a linguist who does not have a psychologist’s education, and draw conclusions on it (about guilt. – “Kommersant”) it is forbidden”.
From the examination, commissioned by the defense, it follows that the student “did not call for real violence,” since “death penalty in the electric chair is possible only in the USA.” The video itself is described there as “an ironic statement of opinion.”
The prosecution demanded that the defendant be sentenced to four years in prison, the court appointed three. The United Press Service of the Judicial System of the Tyumen Region specified that Mr. Martyushev was also ordered to pay 6,000 rubles to the state. and banned the administration of websites on the Internet for two years. Mr. Martyushev pleaded not guilty and intends to appeal the verdict. Lawyer Rusnakov says that such a “tough” sentence was unexpected for him: “This is a unique case, usually in such cases it costs a suspended sentence. And in the 2000s, my clients were never given anything more serious than fines.”
Media lawyer Galina Arapova (included in the register of foreign agents) recalls the first trial regarding a similar post on the network: in 2008, blogger Savely Terentyev from Syktyvkar received a year of probation for publicly admitting to “hatred” for people in uniform, discussing their “lack of education” and a proposal to install “stoves like in Auschwitz” in every city. Note that he was charged with Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity). In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights satisfied the complaint of Mr. Terentyev, who had left the Russian Federation by that time, for “violation of freedom of speech” and ordered him to compensate for legal costs. Ms. Arapova also considers the words of Kirill Martyushev “an expressive statement about the need for harsh punishment by the state (in relation to police officers who violated the rights of citizens. – “Kommersant”), and not lynching and arbitrary violence against law enforcement officers.”