Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog

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Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog

On 7 July 2008, a Russian blogger was sentenced to one year suspended jail after having been found guilty of "inciting hatred and enmity" for a comment left on a LiveJournal weblog. According to Kommersant newspaper, the young blogger Savva Terentiev was saying on the blog that "Those who become cops are scum," and calling for officers to be put on a bonfire. For his alleged offence, inciting hatred and denigrating the human dignity of a social group, the prosecutors were asking for a significant fine and two years behind bars, which seemed excessive. During the trial, Terentyev referred to his statements on the blog that corrupt cops should burned in Auschwitz-like ovens as "hyperbole and exaggeration," and apologized to concentration camp victims and the police officers he might have "involuntarily hurt with the contested commentary." The final court decision was to sentence the blogger to one suspended jail year.

Free speech campaigners are concerned about the fact that the ruling might create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, especially in Russia where the mainstream traditional media is biased in favour of the authority.

"This was an absolutely unjustified verdict. (...) Savva for sure wrote a rude comment ... but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody" told Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, to Reuters agency.

Recently, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed his views on the freedom of speech saying Russia should use a light touch when policing the Internet."Thank God we live in a free society. (...) It's possible to go on to the Internet and get basically anything you want. In that regard, there are no problems of closed access to information in Russia today, there weren't any yesterday and there won't be any tomorrow," he said last month in an interview with Reuters.

Russian blogger sentenced for "extremist" post (7.07.2008)

Russian Blogger Sentenced Over LiveJournal Comment (7.07.2008)

EDRi-gram: More control over the Internet wanted in Russia (7.05.2008)

Source: EDRI-gram „Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog“ Number 6.14, 16 July, 2008.