Human rights activists from Memorial and OVD-Info sent a letter to the European Commission and the Council of Europe in support of Aleksey Moskalev and his daughter Masha, who had been sentenced to a real term. Memorial reported this on its Telegram channel.
Russian human rights activists asked to prevent the extradition of Moskalev from Belarus to Russia. They insist that the man must be transferred to a third country that is safer for him.
On March 28, a court in the Tula region sentenced 53-year-old Moskalev to two years in prison in the case of “discrediting” the army (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code). At the same time, Moskalev himself was not at the meeting, later the press secretary of the court, Olga Dyachuk, said that he had escaped from house arrest.
Two days later, lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov said that on the night of March 29, Moskalev was detained in Minsk . An unnamed SOTA source claimed that the detention could have occurred «due to the inclusion of a mobile phone in the apartment,» according to which it was possible to calculate him. Later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus confirmed the information about the detention. “Citizen Moskalev was detained by police at the request of the Russian police,” the Interior Ministry said.
The security forces drew attention to Moskalev in April 2022, after he was called to school because of an anti-war drawing by his daughter Masha. Then the man was fined because of a comment in Odnoklassniki under the administrative article on “discrediting” (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), and at the end of the year a criminal case was opened against him because of a post about the murders in Bucha in the same social network.
Since March 2, the man has been under house arrest, his daughter was taken to an orphanage and they refuse to give it to her father. It turned out that in January, the Commission on Juvenile Affairs filed suit for restriction of parental rights of both parents of the girl. The lawsuit was registered in court at the end of February. The meeting is scheduled for April 6.
On March 30, Masha Moskaleva's mother, Olga Sitchikha, announced that she was planning to take the girl from the orphanage. The Moskalev family support group in a telegram noted that Sitchikhina had previously refused to take the child when she was approached with this question. Children's Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova argued that Masha Moskaleva «now remains in [the shelter] at the request» of her mother, because «the relationship between them is complicated.»