At Moscow’s Khoroshevsky Court, prosecutors asked that 84-year-old human rights defender Lev Ponomarev be sentenced in absentia to 6.5 years in prison and also barred from administering websites for 10 years. The information was reported by a Mediazona correspondent from the courtroom.
Ponomarev is being tried on two charges: evading the duties imposed on a “foreign agent” and organizing the activities of an “undesirable” organization. According to the prosecution, no later than November 25, 2022, he created the Andrei Sakharov Institute in Paris. In July last year, the organization was declared “undesirable” in Russia.
Investigators and prosecutors say that after that, the activist continued to organize the distribution of the institute’s materials. The indictment says those publications were aimed at “forming protest sentiments and discrediting” Russia’s state authorities.
The case file includes a memorandum from the Prosecutor General’s Office which, among other episodes, mentions a petition on change.org calling for the non-recognition of the results of the 2024 presidential election. Mediazona notes that the petition itself indicates Ponomarev was not its creator but one of its signatories.
The second charge stems from the absence of the mandatory “foreign agent” disclaimers in publications. During closing arguments, the court-appointed lawyer said he did not know his client’s position and that under such circumstances he could ask only for “an acquittal.”
Lev Ponomarev was added to the “foreign agents” register in late 2020. After that, he was repeatedly fined under administrative cases for violating legislation on “foreign agents.” On March 19, Mediazona reported that the Interior Ministry had placed the rights defender on its wanted list.