Russian pastafarianism activist Iosilevich sentenced to 20 months in penal settlement over “undesired organisation” 

A Nizhny Novgorod court has sentenced Mikhail Iosilevich, a “prior” of the local Flying Spaghetti Monster Church, to 20 months in a minimum-security prison for “managing an undesired organisation,” SOTA says.

Iosilevich will spend approximately three months in a penal settlement, considering the time he spent in a pre-trial detention centre and under house arrest. He tried to leave Russia for Israel on 10 May, but was detained at the airport as he previously signed a pledge not to leave the country. He managed to get through the customs using his Israeli passport, but was detained shortly after and sent to a pre-trial detention centre.

Iosilevich faced criminal prosecution in October 2020. The prosecutor’s theory was that he “used his religious lodge to train election observers, attempting to infringe the foundations of the constitutional order.” The investigation linked the event with the banned Open Russia, an organisation founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch and Putin’s critic.