Week-ending 30 October 2020
On 29 October 2020 Liublino district court in Moscow found Pavel Rebrovsky guilty of creating an extremist organization and sentenced him the same day to six years’ imprisonment.
Memorial Human Rights Centre considers all the defendants in the New Greatness case political prisoners.
RFE/RL, Thursday, 29 October 2020: A court in Moscow has sentenced a member of the so-called New Greatness movement to six years in prison on extremism charges. The Lyublino district court on October 29 found Pavel Rebrovsky guilty of creating an extremist organization and sentenced him the same day. The court also ruled that Rebrovsky will be under parole-like police supervison for one year after serving his term and barred him from placing any materials on the Internet for three years. In addition, the court concluded that Rebrovsky may have psychiatric problems and must undergo medical treatment because of that.
In April last year, Rebrovsky made a deal with investigators to testify against other suspects in the high-profile case, and was sentenced to 29 months in prison for being a member of the group.
However, several months later, after Rebrovsky recanted his testimony, saying it had been made under duress, prosecutors demanded that his verdict and sentence be annulled, which the Moscow City Court did in October 2019. Then in August this year, the Lyublino district court sentenced seven members of the movement to prison terms ranging from seven years in prison to four-year suspended sentences. All of the defendants were arrested in 2018 and charged with creating an extremist group with the intention of overthrowing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
