Journalist Antonina Favorskaya was placed on preventive registration in a pre-trial detention center as “a person who propagandizes, professes or disseminates extremist ideology.” This was reported by SOTAvision.
Favorskaya spoke about registration in a letter from the pre-trial detention center. She also said that she decided to “get inspired and re-read Orwell’s imperishable book in order to study and, God forbid, not commit some kind of thought crime.” Favorskaya has been in pre-trial detention for almost two months.
«During this time, I met here ministers of culture, directors, bloggers, bankers, playwrights, pediatricians, and journalists… So we have a wonderful company here! And I really want it not to be replenished with good people,” the journalist wrote.
In October 2023, Liliya Chanysheva, the ex-coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in Ufa, was registered as “prone to committing crimes of a terrorist nature and extremist nature.” She said that the reason was her criminal case — in June, Chanysheva was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges of in participation in the activities of the “extremist community”. Later the term was increased to nine and a half years.
Favorskaya was detained on March 17, three hours after laying flowers on Navalny’s grave, the next day she was arrested for 10 days under a protocol of disobedience to a police officer (Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code). Upon leaving the special detention center, she was detained as a suspect in a criminal case and arrested on charges of participating in the activities of an “extremist community.”
The press service of the Moscow courts reported that the journalist is accused of “collecting material, producing and editing videos and publications for FBK.” When Favorskaya was taken out of the courtroom, she managed to shout: “They are trying me for an article about how the FSIN tortured Alexei Navalny!”
