The constitutional court (CC) of Russia has confirmed the legality of criminal responsibility for repeated violations at rallies. About it reports TASS.
“[Criminal liability] is permissible if it is equivalent to the nature and extent of the act and does not lead to derogation from the principle of equality, proportionality and justice,” read the resolution, the Chairman of the constitutional court Valery Zorkin.
Therefore, the court dismissed the complaint Ildar Dading, the first convict in the Russian criminal code for repeated violations at rallies, on this provision of the criminal law. According to opposition activists, this provision provides for criminal liability for formal violations solely on the basis of the fact they are repeated, and also allows you to bring the matter before the entry into force of court decisions on cases of administrative offences.
The side of the Dading in this question was occupied by the General Prosecutor’s office and the experts of the far Eastern Federal University. The reason is that “do not exist two important criteria of criminalization is a necessary and sufficiently high degree of social danger of the act and the infliction of harm to legally protected public relations.”
In December 2015, the Basmanny court of Moscow sentenced the Dading found guilty of numerous violations during rallies, to three years in a General regime colony. He was the first who was prosecuted under article 212.1 of the criminal code.
Article 212.1 of the — “Repeated violation of the established procedure of organizing or holding meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches or picketing” criminal code of Russia was amended in 2014.