Pardoned by the president of the Russian Federation Sergey Mokhnatkin was released. Let's remind, he was arrested on December 31, 2009. Mokhnatkin received a term for the presence on the meeting of opposition in protection of a freedom of assembly on December 31, 2009 on Triumfalnaya Square. According to the version of defence which was confirmed by other participants of the action, Mokhnatkin had no relation to opposition. He simply went by, saw how militiamen dragged a woman to the paddywagon, stood up for her and was himself detained. According to the charge version, in the bus he hit the sergeant of militia Moiseyev in the head, having broken his nose. Mokhnatkin argues that the militiaman gripped him by the throat, it is very similar to the truth - practice of torment buses is widely known.
I will remind that only case of “the pearl ensign” ended with sentence (by the way, conditional) though there was a set of cases of beatings from the part of militiamen during protest actions. As a rule there were even no even office checks of other cases though the press wrote about these cases, there was a great number of witnesses, not to mention victims who often went from a place of communication with law enforcement agencies directly to hospital.
While any injury, even imaginary one of the employee of "bodies" inevitably comes to end with prison term. This statistics characterizes law-enforcement system of the Russian Federation in the most exhaustive way.
The Russian and international human rights organizations tried to stand up for Mokhnatkin, however they failed to appeal the sentence brought in August, 2010. Dmitry Medvedev satisfied application about pardon on April 23, 2012 when Mokhnatkin’s term had practically come to its end - usually "first time conviction” receive conditional early release essentially earlier, but they created for Mokhnatkin such conditions of "imprisonment" that he used to stay in a punishment cell and declared hungry strike.
Now let’s look: amnesty of the political prisoners was the first and the simplest requirement of opposition to the power. Mokhnatkin wasn't a political convict, though he was included into the list which was given to Medvedev – this case was the most painfully scandalous and unscrupulous. If police though in the smallest degree was interested in its reputation among citizens, it should petition before court to dismiss case itself. But we have no citizens - we have servants and the police is separated from other population meaningly, it’s been made a caste of literally untouchable. Policeman today can do with you or with someone before your eyes everything he wishes, but you have the right only to stand and be afraid of – otherwise you will go to prison. At that you receive the term which policeman could receive only if he kills you and even after that it couldn’t be guaranteed, may be he would just receive office sanction.
Now we hear about this humiliating pardon of the innocent person, 2 months prior to the term termination... It’s interesting what social consequences the Kremlin predicts after that "mercy act"?
Аnatoly Baranov, editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk
