On 20 March, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court arrested Konstantin Novikov, human rights project OVD-Info reports. The Russian national was previously beaten up by police officers during a raid of Open Space, a human rights centre for activists.
He was found guilty of failing to comply with police officers’ orders.
Novikov was detained on 19 March. On that day, he was in Open Space for the presentation of comics by artist Sasha Skochilenko. Police officers stormed into the building 1.5 hours after the start of the event.
The participants of the event were taken to a police station and then allowed to leave without protocols being drawn up against them. According to human rights defenders, the people were asked the reason for their attending of Open Space. The police officers asked the journalists who were present at the presentation about their stance on the “special military operation”.
According to witnesses, one of the police officers asked for Novikov’s ID, however, Novikov declined to hand it over. After that, they used physical force on Novikov. “Later on, the man was hospitalised, but it seems that he wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital and was taken to the police station and court from there,” OVD-Info reports.
One of the women who had been taken to the police station told Novaya-Europe that while they had been beating Novikov up in the police van, they had also been threatening another male detainee with rape. “They said, ‘We will cornhole you, and no one will know. Do you know Kamardin? That’s what happened to him, and we got away with it.’ They said something like that,” the young woman said.
