Artem Kamardin, a participant of the Mayakovsky readings, has been sent to the Serbsky Centre of Forensic Psychiatry for a month-long mandatory psychiatric assessment, SOTAvision reports.
Artem was sent to assessment on 21 November, this became known today at the appeal court session. The court did not consider the case in Kamardin’s absence as he wanted to attend the session in person.
On 26 September, a police strike team barged into the apartment shared by poet Artem Kamardin and activists Alexander Menyukov and Alexandra Popova. The reason for the “room inspection”, which is supposed to be voluntary in accordance with the Russian law, was Kamardin’s performance at the anti-mobilisation Mayakovsky poetry readings in Moscow with a poem dubbed “Kill me, militiaman”.
The poet says that during the search, he was tortured and raped with a dumbbell bar. The policemen shot a video of the rape and then showed it to his girlfriend Alexandra Popova. The police also tortured her in another room: they superglued stickers on her face and eyes, beat her and told her that the five of them would rape her.
Later, Kamardin and his fellow poets were charged with inciting hatred or enmity towards “the members of volunteer armed formations of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics”.
