Moscow Court Sentences Ustinov To 3.5 Years For Violence Against Law Enforcer At Aug Rally

Moscow's Tverskoy court sentenced unauthorized rally participant Pavel Ustinov to 3.5 years in prison for violence against riot police in the Russian capital's center on August 3, a Sputnik correspondent reported from the courtroom Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th September, 2019) Moscow's Tverskoy court sentenced unauthorized rally participant Pavel Ustinov to 3.5 years in prison for violence against riot police in the Russian capital's center on August 3, a Sputnik correspondent reported from the courtroom Monday.

According to the case materials, on August 3, on Pushkin Square, senior police sergeant Alexander Lyagin detained Ustinov, who was "violating public order and being an active participant in riots." Ustinov resisted, and Lyagin had his shoulder dislocated. The defendant pleaded not guilty.

"To find Ustinov Pavel guilty of committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 318 of the Russian Criminal Code, and to sentence him to 3 years and 6 months in a general regime penal colony," the judge announced as the verdict.

During the hearing, the court reviewed video footage from the scene. Lyagin claimed in his testimony that he had been hospitalized for 20 days following the incident.

Unauthorized rallies began in Moscow in mid-July following the decision of the city's election commission to bar several opposition candidates from participating in the city council election. To have been registered, each prospective candidate should have collected a certain number of signatures and the commission cited a large proportion of "bad" signatures as their reason for refusing the registration of the would-be candidates.

Previously, Egor Zhukov, Ivan Podkopaev, Danila Beglets, Evgeny Kovalenko, Konstantin Kotov received various prison sentences for participating in unauthorized rallies.