In the summer of 2020, a high-profile story took place in the city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Krai. Five local teenagers were detained for putting up posters criticising the authorities and supporting political prisoners. The case became famous in connection with the "FSB explosion in Minecraft", which fuelled many media, bloggers and Internet sites at the time.
At that time, the defendants in the case - Nikita Uvarov (pictured), Denis Mikhailenko and Bogdan Andreev - had barely reached the age of criminal responsibility for serious offences: they were 14 years old.
We want to refresh our readers' memories of the main aspects of this story.
So, Nikita, Denis and Bogdan were charged under Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, "Training for the purpose of terrorist activity". Given the young age of the defendants, they faced imprisonment from 7.5 to 10 years (for adults, the article provides for liability up to life imprisonment).
Nikita was sent to pre-trial detention centre for refusing to cooperate with the investigation. Denis and Bogdan, under pressure from the law enforcers, confessed and were eventually placed under house arrest. However, six months later Denis was still sent to pre-trial detention centre, allegedly for using the Internet despite the ban.
Five months after his arrest, the Kansk case was supplemented with another article - "Organisation of a terrorist community and participation in it" (Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). This charge was based on the famous explosion of the FSB building in the computer game "Minecraft", as well as correspondence with criticism of the FSB from Vkontakte and Telegram, homemade firecrackers, reading "extremist" literature and posting the same leaflets.
At the beginning of March 2021, the investigation excluded from the charge article 205.4, but added articles 222 and 223 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Storage of explosives" and "Manufacturing of explosives").
The teenagers were not actually engaged in any real terrorism, let alone organising a criminal association. However, blatantly dragging the spectre of terrorism onto the scene was enough to potentially ruin the lives of three young boys.
At the moment, the criminal prosecution of all three defendants in the Kansk case is ongoing.
____
Source: Left Political Prisoners Foundation