Russia has imprisoned the chief editor of the independent Mediazona news internet site for 25 days for retweeting a joke that apparently promoted a recent objection in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Mediazona reported Wednesday.
Sergei Smirnov, 45, was detained as well as later on launched Saturday on fees of “inciting engagement in an unauthorized rally.” Images of his young boy seeing him being restrained on the road were shared commonly on Russian social media.
Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court located Smirnov guilty of a repeat infraction of Russia’s protest guidelines, a charge culpable by as much as 30 days of management arrest, a penalty in between 150,000 rubles and 300,000 rubles or approximately 200 hours of required labor.
Prosecutors implicated Smirnov of advertising the Jan. 23 rally by retweeting a message featuring an image of Dmitry Spirin, the pro-Navalny frontman of the Russian rock band Tarakany, together with the rally’s planned day and also time. The initial tweet’s writer joked of Smirnov’s resemblance to the frontman.
Smirnov maintains that he did not go to the rally and had actually stayed at home that day.
” I am a journalist, the editor-in-chief, so it would in concept be incorrect for me to call for demos. I don’t generally attend them since I am much less helpful there than other reporters,” he claimed in court Wednesday.
Following the decision, he tweeted “I wish I do not obtain fired from Mediazona.”
At the very least 30 Russian media electrical outlets and also a number of independent reporters have demanded Smirnov’s release, claiming the case against him was politically encouraged.
” The fact that they are imprisoning not just the lobbyists but the journalists is a vital landmark. This is a new range of political repressions,” said Russian journalist Alexei Pivovarov.
Smirnov was formerly detained last summer for presenting a solo picket on behalf of fellow reporter Ilya Azar, that himself was imprisoned for a solo objection.
Mediazona was introduced by Pussy Riot punk lobbyist team participants Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova in 2014. The independent magazine concentrates on protection of police and also the judicial systems in Russia, Belarus and Central Asia.