News

The Moscow Directorate of the Investigative Committee is investigating a number of cases over unauthorized rally held on 5 November in Moscow, an attack on a police officer that took place during the rally and offences committed via social media before that. All those crimes were classified as calls for mass riots under part 3 of Article 212, calls for terrorist attacks under Part 2 of Article 205 and use of violence against a representative of authority under Part 1 of Article 318 of the RF Criminal Code.

A few days before the unauthorized rally, on 31 October 2017, a video was posted online containing calls for mass riots and terrorist attacks, as well as extremist actions on 5 November 2017 in different cities of Russia. There was also information containing the description of ways how to commit those crimes and fight back law enforcers. Those actions, the investigators believe, provoked some categories of citizens to get together for the unauthorized mass event on 5 November in Moscow.

More than 350 people, including underage ones, who violated public order, were identified and taken to law-enforcement authorities on the same day thanks to efficient work of investigators, officers of the metropolitan police and Russian Guard. The investigators have questioned the participants of the rally, searched them and confiscated from some of them many items that can be used for violent actions (black masks, bullet-proof vests, gas masks, baseball bats, screw drivers, brass knuckles, metallic bars, jackknives, professional slingshots with metallic balls, hammers, pepper and paint spray cans), as well as paraphernalia of organizations banned in the Russian Federation.

In addition, a 48-year-old man present near the rally site in Moscow, hit a police officer in the head when the latter one was checking his documents. Today, the investigators are going to ask courts to place the man in custody pending trial.

Russian law-enforcement authorities are always ready to such acts of crime and have experience how to fight them. The Investigative Committee has investigated similar cases and the accused answered for their crimes. It is natural that those involved by the organizers in such crimes change their mind very quickly and regret what they have done. Some of them actively cooperate with investigators hoping for more lenient punishment. Anyway, participants of such mass riots have to remember that they can’t get away with it and they will have to answer for their crimes sooner or later. All the above mentioned crimes are punishable with prison terms.