Alexei Gaskarov Denied Parole

Grani.ru

June 17, 2016

Novomoskovsk City Court in Tula Region has denied Bolotnaya Square case convict Alexei Gaskarov’s request of parole, Gaskarov’s wife Anna Karpova [sic] reported on Snob.ru.

“Novomoskovsk City Court Judge Irina Sapronova turned down the request. The spokesman for the penal colony also testified against the request, because Gaskarov had been reprimanded for not greeting a penal colony employee in March,” wrote Karpova.

According to Karpova, the penal colony gave Gaskarov a negative character report. The report noted that the convict had been issued two disciplinary reprimands in solitary confinement and two in the colony for violating the daily routine and not greeting wardens.

And yet the report states that Gaskarov has not violated the internal code of conduct or the terms of his sentence, has been working at the colony and taking part in social activities, has qualified as an electrician, and has been studying to be a welder. Gaskarov has received two commendations for hard work and good behavior. He is polite with the wardens, neat, has a positive effect on new inmates, attends events, and has no outstanding writs of enforcement, the report states.

Gaskarov was arrested in late April 2013. On August 18, 2014, Judge Natalia Susina of the Zamoskvorechye District Court in Moscow sentenced the activist to three and a half years in a medium-security penitentiary facility under Criminal Code Articles 212 (involvement in rioting) and 318.1 (use of non-threatening violence against a state official).

Gaskarov was found guilty of tugging police officer Pavel Bulychev’s arm and police officer Igor Ibatulin’s leg. Gaskarov claimed he tugged Bulychev’s arm to break a police chain that was causing the crowd to stampede. He attempted to pull Ibatulina away from a detainee lying on the ground.

Gaskarov himself was severely beaten at Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, sustaining lacerations to his head. And yet the Russian Investigative Committee refused to file criminal charges in response to his complaint.

On November 27, 2014, a panel of judges at the Moscow City Court (with Tatyana Dodonova acting as reporting judge) left the antifascist’s verdict unchanged.

On June 24, 2015, Novomoskovsk City Court Judge Elena Gorlatova denied Gaskarov parole, citing an outstanding reprimand he received while still in custody at Pretrial Detention Facility No. 5 in Moscow.

Alexei Gaskarov was born in 1985 in Zhukovsky, Moscow Region. A graduate of the Government Finance Academy, he worked at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he was arrested and charged during an investigation of the campaign to defend the Khimki Forest but was acquitted the same year.

Translated by the Russian Reader. No thanks to anyone for letting one of Russia’s finest young men rot in prison for the crime of acting like a decent human being in a horrible situation deliberately provoked by the police. Photo courtesy of bolotnoedelo.info. Read my previous reports on Alexei Gaskarov’s case and the futile efforts to free him.