Boris Stomakhin receives a five-year sentence in Moscow

The Butyrsky Court in Moscow has sentenced the Chief Editor of the publication “Radical politics”, Boris Stomakhin, to 5 years imprisonment.  Stomakhin was convicted of inciting religious enmity and public calls to commit extremist actions. The sentence was handed down under Article 282 § 1 of the Criminal Code (“incitement to religious enmity … committed in public or with the use of mass media”), and also under Article 280 § 2 (“public calls to carry out extremist activities, committed with the use of the mass media”).

Stomakhin’s articles were published on the site of Chechen separatists “Kazakh Centre”. According to Stomakhin’s lawyer, Alexei Golybyov, the grounds for criminal proceedings were four issues of the bulletin “Radical politics”. The lawyer explains: “The publications which appeared on the Internet were a repeat of material which had been published in the bulletin “Radical politics”. Stomakhin has been charged with actively publishing his own articles and the articles of other authors connected with criticism of the actions of the authorities in Chechnya”.

The prosecutor’s office claims that “reflecting in his publications information appearing in Russia connected with military actions in the Chechen Republic, and also terrorist acts on Russian territory, Stomakhin approved of criminals and terrorists whose actions were aimed at destroying the Russian people as a nation”.

Stomakhin has been in custody since March 2006. The criminal proceedings were launched in December 2006. Until the moment of his arrest, Stomakhin had been on the wanted list.