Ilya Pershin in court. Photo: David Frenkel / Mediazona
The Oktyabrsky District Court of the northern capital sentenced Ilya Pershin from St. Petersburg to three years in prison. The artist (as he calls himself, but before his arrest he worked as a hotel administrator) will serve time in a colony-settlement. The court found him guilty of beating up a riot policeman.
Pershin was detained by employees of the anti-extremism unit of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region on February 17, 2021. He was accused of resisting a government representative at an unsanctioned rally in support of Alexei Navalny on January 31. The evidence was video recordings of external surveillance. On them, Pershin is indeed present at the rally, but there is no beatings to the riot police on these recordings.
“My client happened to be at the rally by accident,” Alexey Kalugin, Pershin's lawyer, told Novaya. “At some point, he saw that not far from him several people in civilian clothes were beating up a protester. I realized that the event had become dangerous and tried to leave St. Isaac's Square. At that moment, someone grabbed him from behind. Ilya says — and this is confirmed by the video recording — that he did not deliver any blows. Moreover, if they grabbed him from behind, then how could he kick him under the knee of someone who was trying to hold him back? «
Due to restrictions on court visits during the pandemic, the press was not allowed into the courtroom. But the joint press service of the courts provided a video and photo from the trial, where Pershin can be seen — a slender bespectacled man, no more than 70 kg in weight. The riot policeman Ivan Alekseev, beaten (according to the investigation) by him, is a rather tough guy, albeit shorter in stature, who, like any special forces fighter, has experience in hand-to-hand combat. In his testimony, he argued that Pershin struck him twice in the chest with his elbow, although he did not cause any damage: Alekseev was in a bulletproof vest that could withstand not only an elbow blow, but also stop a nine-millimeter bullet.
And then, according to the riot policeman, Pershin contrived and kicked him under the kneecap. Than inflicted physical suffering.
Ivan Alekseev (center) after the incident on St. Isaac's Square. Photos from social networks
“We conducted our own experiment, based on footage of the video footage presented to the court,” says Kalugin. — Well, it doesn't work that a person wrapped in his hands from behind could strike the back of the knee joint. Moreover, when we stated that the riot police officer was injured simply by slipping in the wet snow, he was released from participation in the process, without allowing us to ask additional questions. Which could ruin the version of the investigation. But the court, apparently, needed not a collapse of the charges, but a guilty verdict. Many media outlets wrote about the Pershin case. The main message was this: if you don't want to go to the bunk, don't take part in the protests. «
The United Press Service of the St. Petersburg Courts provided Novaya with statistics of sentences under Article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: “For six months, 88 cases were considered. Nine discontinued. Measures of a medical nature were prescribed one by one. Court fines were imposed in two cases. 70 are considered in a special order (when the accused fully admits his guilt). Punishments: fines or probation. The rest did not admit their guilt. They were sentenced to real imprisonment: in a colony-settlement, previously convicted — in a penal colony. «
The «remaining» are six people. Two of them are participants in unauthorized actions. They were the ones who received the harshest punishment. Despite the fact that the harm to the health of police officers caused by Ilya Pershin and Nikolai Devyaty (the second convict) is quite controversial. In the case of the Ninth, the physical damage was recorded from the words of the police themselves, and experts were also drawn up from their words.