His imprisonment made international headlines – now, Moscow opposition activist Konstantin Kotov may win a reprieve from his controversial four-year jail sentence for taking part in multiple unsanctioned protests.
Kotov, only the second person to be imprisoned under the controversial Dadin Law, has been granted a fresh appeal. The news is the latest twist in a long saga.
In September of last year, Kotov was convicted of repeated violations of public-assembly laws, with the Moscow Tverskoy District Court saying that he “disregarded basic constitutional principles of Russia.”
One month later, the Moscow City Court reviewed Kotov’s appeal and upheld his sentence. Then, last December, President Vladimir Putin instructed prosecutors “to organize a check of the legality and validity of the conviction in respect of Konstantin Kotov.” His legal team did not give up on having his punishment softened, and finally, Kotov’s case reached the Constitutional Court. In January, the court canceled the sentence and ordered a lower court to review the case.
On Monday, Moscow’s Second Court of Cassation ordered a new trial in the Court of Appeals. “The appeal decision of the Moscow City Court of October 14, 2019, in respect of Kotov was canceled,” the court decided. “The criminal case should be sent to the court of appeal for consideration in a different composition of the court.”
As the conviction hasn’t been quashed, the judge ordered Kotov to remain in detention until May 2. The re-trial will focus on the validity and legality of the four-year sentence, once confirmed by the now-canceled appeal decision in October 2019. The Prosecutor General’s Office called the verdict “excessively harsh” and proposed commuting the sentence to just a year in prison.
In December 2019, President Vladimir Putin said in his annual news conference that punishments for participating in unauthorized rallies in other countries are “much more stringent” than in Russia, but promised to look into the case.
Last summer, a series of both authorized and un-authorized rallies were held in the Russian capital against the removal of some candidates from the Moscow City Duma elections. At a July protest, 1,373 people were detained, and over 20 were charged in what was called the ‘Moscow Affair’. Some of the charges were eventually dropped, and Kotov received the longest punishment of them all. The most prominent protestor, student Yegor Zhukov, was eventually given three years’ probation.
The Dadin Law makes two administrative violations within 180 days a criminal offense, with a possible sentence of up to five years in a penal colony. The law, introduced in July 2014, received its name as it was first used to imprison activist Ildar Dadin for repeated transgressions of protest regulations.
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