The health of Artem Kamardin, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, has worsened in the pretrial detention center. This was reported by a support group for the defendants in the Mayakovsky Readings case.
Kamardin complains of constant and unbearable back pain. The support group suggests that he may need spinal surgery.
«We now need to ensure that Artem is taken from the pre-trial detention center to the hospital for examination. We kindly ask you to help us, send an appeal with a request to take Artem from the pre-trial detention center for examination,» the appeal says.
Kamardin is being held in Moscow's Butyrka Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 2. On August 21, the Moscow City Court will consider an appeal against his sentence.
«It is unacceptable to judge for art.» Speeches by participants of the Mayakovsky Readings after they were asked to receive up to 7 years in prison
In December 2023, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow sentenced Kamardin to seven years in a general regime penal colony in the case of humiliation of members of the «armed formations of the LPR and DPR»and calls for activities directed against state security. The case was opened due to poems recited during the Mayakovsky Readings on Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow.
On the evening of September 26, 2022, special forces came to the apartment where Kamardin, his then-fiancée Alexandra Popova, and their friend Alexander Menyukov were located. The activists said that the security forces beat them and threatened to force them to apologize on camera.
Initially, a case was opened against Kamardin and two other poets, Yegor Shtovba and Nikolai Daineko, for humiliating representatives of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. The charge under the article on calls for anti-state activity was added to them in March.
According to the investigation, Kamardin read a poem with a recommendation not to take summonses and not to go to the military registration and enlistment office on them. Shtovba and Daineko were charged as accomplices. The latter was sentenced to four years in prison, Shtovba received five and a half years.
A secret prosecution witness under the pseudonym Jackie, whose testimony was presented in court, said that he was present at the Mayakovsky Readings and heard Kamardin's speech.
«The Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics were touched upon, volunteers were touched upon, the poems talked about raping the daughters of those volunteers who left,» he claimed.
The witness also said that Shtovba did not read the poems on his own, but only shouted them after Kamardin. He ignored questions about Daineko.
“You can’t imagine what happened to me in just over a year.” Convicted poet Nikolai Daineko testified in court on the Mayakovsky Readings case