20:43, 27 February 2024

Nikita Zhuravel sentenced to imprisonment for burning Koran

Nikita Zhuravel. Screenshot of the photo posted on the Telegram channel "Chechnya Segodnhya" (Chechnya
Today) on November 2, 2023 https://t.me/chechnyatoday/14249

In Chechnya, a court found Nikita Zhuravel guilty and sentenced him to three years and six months of imprisonment for burning the Koran.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on February 20, a public prosecutor requested court to find Nikita Zhuravel guilty of violating the right to religion and hooliganism and sentence him to three years and six months of imprisonment.

The Visaitovsky District Court of Grozny sentenced Nikita Zhuravel exactly to the same term of imprisonment as that requested by the public prosecutor.

The term of imprisonment requested by the public prosecutor does not look very tough under the Russian standards, but the very qualification of the charge raises questions, claims Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of the “SOVA” Research Centre*.

Earlier, human rights defenders have doubted Nikita Zhuravel’s testimony about the burning of the Koran, taking into account the conditions of detention in which he is being kept in Chechnya.

Nikita Zhuravel was detained in Volgograd on May 20, 2023. The young man said that he recorded a video of the burning of the Koran at the direction of the Ukrainian special services, received 10,000 roubles for doing that and handed the recording itself over to an officer of the Ukrainian special services.

*The name of the organization has been clarified at 2:12 p.m. Moscow time.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 27, 2024 at 10:54 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Source: Caucasian Knot