The Leninsky District Court of Perm arrested Alexander Chernyshov, chairman of the Center for Historical Memory, in the case of attempted smuggling of cultural property (part 3 of article 30; paragraph «c» of part 2 of article 226.1 of the Criminal Code). This was reported from the courtroom by a Properm correspondent.
According to the siloviki, Chernyshov was going to take the archival documents of the Perm «Memorial» to Germany, where the former head of the organization, Robert Latypov, has been staying since last summer.
“These are orders for the organization, these are minutes of meetings, minutes of meetings of the organization’s board, lists of participants, official correspondence, applications for grants,” Latypov explained to Mediazone, adding that all these papers were studied two years ago employees of the Ministry of Justice.
Archive Hunt. The former head of the Perm-based Memorial was accused of trying to smuggle the papers of the organization abroad
The FSB insists that the documentation of the Perm-based Memorial is of cultural and historical value. On May 19, as part of the investigation of this criminal case, the security forces conducted a series of searches at the homes of Perm human rights activists and members of Memorial.
Alexander Chernyshov himself was detained on May 5 at the Sheremetyevo airport and arrested for 15 days under a protocol on petty hooliganism (Article 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). On May 20, the man was supposed to be released from the special detention center in Istra, near Moscow, but the historian's colleagues and friends who came to meet him were unable to see him. After that, nothing was known about Chernyshov for several days.
According to Properm, the historian fully admitted his guilt and asked to be sent under house arrest. However, the court considered that the man could hide from the investigation.