Updated July 29, 2024 at 6 p.m.*
A criminal case has been opened against Alexey Sokolov, a human rights lawyer from the city of Yekaterinburg, for repeatedly displaying the Facebook logo – perhaps the first case of its kind in Russia.
Security forces arrested Sokolov at his home in Yekaterinburg, in Sverdlovsk Oblast on July 5 at 6 a.m. According to his lawyer, he was hit in the groin, his face was pressed to the floor and a T-shirt pulled over his head. They said: “You’re not done yet? You’re pissing us off.” They seized all his equipment: not only computers and mobile phones, but also a router and a speaker. Sokolov was taken to the Investigative Committee, Russia’s main federal investigating authority.
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There, Sokolov says he was beaten and was not told why he was detained for more than six hours (this is outlined in the letter he left for his fiancé Olga, who then gave it to journalists).
On the day of his arrest, Sokolov was going to post a video of the torture of prisoners in an Ural Mountain penal colony. The human rights defender is sure that he is being persecuted for precisely this reason.
Extremist symbols
Sokolov is suspected of participating in repeated public demonstrations of “symbols of an extremist organization”, specifically, the “trademark of the Facebook social network.”
According to head investigator Captain of Justice V. N. Rusakov, Sokolov allegedly displayed the Facebook logo on the Telegram channel “Ural Human Rights Defenders” between October 11 and December 31, 2023 (OVD-Info could not find any such posts on the channel). Sokolov’s lawyer said his client did not publish “anything forbidden” on the channel: “He published the results of his human rights work there. That is all.”
Sokolov believes his criminal case is “an order from the GU FSIN (Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service) of the Sverdlovsk Oblast.” In the letter provided to journalists, Sokolov wrote: “On July 5, I intended to publish video evidence of the torture of prisoners, but I couldn’t.”
Too bad you didn’t go abroad
Sokolov also told his lawyer that during the search, security officers were looking for the video and said “Too bad you didn’t go abroad before this.”
After his arrest, Sokolov was placed in a temporary detention center, and the first court session was held the following day, on Saturday, July 6. Investigator Rusakov requested a closed hearing due to the “secrecy of the preliminary investigation,” and the judge agreed.
Sokolov’s time in the detention center was extended for 72 hours “to collect evidence,” as Alexei’s lawyer explained. On July 8, the Lenin District Court of Yekaterinburg sent Sokolov to a pre-trial detention center until September 1.
Sokolov’s activism
Alongside a team from the Pravovaya Osnova organization, Sokolov has been defending the rights of convicts in Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Oblast for many years. Since 2019, he has been defending the rights of women who are in IK-16 (Correctional Facility 16) Krasnoturyinsk.
The creators of the project “Zhenskiy Srok” posted on their Telegram channel that “He was the first person the prisoners trusted and to whom they talked about how women die in the colonies without medical care. Women were forced to stand for 16 hours in solitary confinement, prevented from attending to their hygiene, forced to carry bags of manure and forbidden from calling their children.”
“Sokolov said that the women were beaten and were not provided with medical care. Patients with cancer, HIV and tuberculosis were not given the necessary medicines. Women in the terminal stages of disease were taken to the hospital supposedly for treatment, where they died.”
One of the last posts to the“Ural Human Rights Defenders” channel before the arrest of Sokolov is from July 4, and refers to IK-16: “The Krasnoturyinsk City Court upheld the complaint of the lawyer A. Sokolov and found the Krasnoturyinsk Investigative Committee investigator’s decision to refuse to initiate criminal proceedings against the employees of IK-16 Krasnoturyinsk unlawful, based on evidence of violence against the imprisoned women as well as a lack of medical care in IK-16, because of which they died.”
The role of Meta
On July 8, the day the court prosecuted Sokolov, the “Ural Human Rights Defenders” channel published news from the court hearing and also posted a video; according to the channel’s authors, this video led to the investigation of Sokolov.
Earlier, on Oct.11, 2023, Sokolov had been arrested for five days for displaying the Facebook logo. This was the first such case; OVD-Info was unable to find another like it.
OVD-Info lawyer Valeriya Vetoshkina says that Russians are usually subject to administrative liability for displaying the LGBTQ+ flag, symbols of organizations related to Alexei Navalny (a red exclamation mark, the symbol of his organization’s strategic “smart voting” campaign), the Belarusian “red-white-red” flag (one of the main symbols of Belarusian protests, which was the flag of Belarus following the collapse of the USSR but proceeding President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule) and other various symbols of organizations recognized as extremist in Russia.
Sokolov was not charged with using the social network, but with displaying symbolism
The Meta corporation, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was declared extremist in March 2022. Yet there is no ban on the use of its social networks. Moreover, there are cases – for example, about the discrediting of or fake news about the army – brought against those who have made posts on the blocked social networks.
That is what happened to Mikhail Zharikov, a native of Nizhny Novgorod, who posted – among other things – a video to Instagram and was sentenced to six years in prison.
“From this story, it follows that Sokolov was not charged with using the social network, but with displaying symbolism,” Vetoshkina commented. “That is, if someone screenshots your post on Facebook and posts it, the problem may be with the person who posted it, because he will be the one who is spreading extremist symbols.”
The lawyer notes that internet posts are a continuous offense: “This means that if you posted something with the logo five years ago, before Meta was recognized as an extremist organization, you could still be held responsible.”
Under the criminal article for the repeated display of “extremist symbols,” Sokolov can be sentenced to up to four years in prison.
*Originally published July 28, 2024, the article was updated July 29, 2024 with enriched media.
