Second court hearing in the Taras Zelenyak Case

The second hearing was held on 4 October in Novosibirsk into the case involving Taras Zelenyak who is charged under Article 282 § 1 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (“Inciting ethnic, racial or religious enmity”) with propagating hatred of Russians on the forum of the Ukrainian website proUA. 

Before it began, unidentified individuals in civilian clothes aggressively prevented representative of the national and cultural organization of Ukrainians Anatoly Minyailo from entering the courtroom.

The witnesses for the prosecution again failed to appear. An employee of the provider “First Mile” which provided their services to Zelenyak explained that he could only provide information about the time that Zelenyak had been on the Internet, and the amount of information passed, but could not give any testimony as to the content of the messages passed.

An officer of the Federal Security Service [FSB] claimed that when they had removed Zelenyak’s computer, the latter had admitted to writing the texts found. However Judge Garaeva ascertained that no such admission had been recorded in the protocol,

Zelenyak’s lawyer asked for a break in the hearing to prepare a written submission to the court. The judge set the next hearing for 26 October at 13.30.