Director Evgenia Berkovich, arrested in the case of calls for terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) because of the play “Finist Yasnyi Sokol”, was taken to St. Petersburg to say goodbye to her grandmother Nina Katerli. Deputy of the city Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky was the first to talk about this.
Berkovich's lawyer Ksenia Karpinskaya confirmed to Mediazona that she was brought from a Moscow pre-trial detention center to St. Petersburg to say goodbye to her grandmother. As the lawyer clarified, the director was taken to another city under escort.
“Before saying goodbye, only relatives were allowed into the hall, and Zhenya Berkovich was brought, they were allowed to say goodbye to their grandmother and hug their mother, Elena Efros. Then, when Zhenya was taken away, they let the others say goodbye,” Vishnevsky wrote. According to Karpinskaya, Berkovich “was not allowed to hug his mother.”
Evgenia Berkovich and screenwriter Svetlana Petriychuk have been in pre-trial detention since May. The reason for the case against them was a play that tells about Russian women who decided to go to Syria to join the Islamists. The security forces also came to Katerli with a search in this case.
On October 25, the Moscow City Court once again approved the extension of their arrest, although the authors of the play asked not to do this, “while none of our loved ones have died.” Less than a month later, on November 20, it became known about the death of Berkovich’s grandmother and human rights activist Nina Katerli — she died at the age of 89.
On the same day, famous directors, actors, writers and journalists wrote an open letter to the Commissioner for human rights Tatyana Moskalkova with a request to facilitate the release of Berkovich and Petriychuk from the pre-trial detention center.
Among those who signed the letter are actors Evgeny Redko, Evgeny Mironov, Chulpan Khamatova, Danila Kozlovsky, Veniamin Smekhov, Marietta Tsigal-Polishchuk, Timofey Tribuntsev, Yulia Peresild and Konstantin Raikin; writers Guzel Yakhina and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, directors Dmitry Krymov and Alexander Sokurov, as well as presenter Ivan Urgant, journalists Katerina Gordeeva and Nikolai Solodnikov.