The police in Chelyabinsk terminated the criminal case on the blocking of roads to the rally on January 31

Photo: action in Chelyabinsk on January 31. Author: Nail Fattakhov / Znak.com

The police in Chelyabinsk dropped the criminal case on blocking the roads to the rally on January 31. The Insider was informed about this by lawyer Andrey Lepekhin.

“This case was opened in order to have a chilling effect on other activists if they think about going to rallies. It was immediately clear that there was no crime – people were passing the carriageway, and police officers lined up on the other side. People were simply left on the road, no cars were moving anywhere at that time. There they persuaded one of the drivers somehow, he gave some kind of testimony, they say, I could crash there. In all the videos, all this is recorded, all these chains of the police. In fact, the police officers themselves are to blame for the fact that people blocked the roadway. This whole case was initiated only in order to exert pressure so that it would be possible to conduct searches of activists, confiscate equipment and phones and carry witnesses in this case, ”the lawyer said in a conversation with The Insider.

As a result, the case under Part 1 of Art. 267 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation against activists Maria Makarova, Sergei Orishevsky, Evgeny Talyshev, Victoria Novikova, Anastasia Galkina, Pavel Strunin, Artem Yaumbayev, Anna Kiseleva, Alexander Kopyev and Sergei Motovilov were closed due to lack of corpus delicti.

During the preliminary investigation, it was established that the actions of the young people did not create a real threat of destruction or damage to property and did not harm the health of citizens.