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November 20, 2006

Russia: Islamist Editor Jailed For Five Years

News from Interfax, Moscow Times and Reuters AlertNet reports that a journalist editor was jailed today for five years for writing on terrorist atrocities, while simultaneously praising those who carried out acts of terror.

Boris Stomakhin was editor of the monthly newspaper Radikalnaya Politika. He also wrote for the Islamist rebel website Kavkaz Center, which is distributed from a server in Lithuania. He had frequently referred to Russia's involvement in Chechnya as an "occupation". He had first been investigated in December 2003, but his trial did not begin until last month. The reason for this was that Stomakhin had gone into hiding, and was only arrested in March this year.

Today, Stomakhin (pictured) was jailed for the crime of inciting religious hatred and calling for extremist actions. The state prosecutor said: "His actions were directed at destroying the Russian people as a nation."

In his trial, Stomakhin said that he had merely expressed an opinion, and said that an opinion was not a "call to action". His attorney, Alexei Golubev, said that Stomakhin would be appealing the sentence within 10 days. Golubev said
that compared to other recent cases, his client's sentence had been excessively harsh.

Last month the editor of web magazine Kursiv, Vladimir Rakhmankov, was fined 20,000 rubles ($750) for insulting a public official. He had described President Vladimir Putin as a "phallic symbol".

In February, states Moscow Times, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, editor of Pravo-Zashchita, was given a two-year suspended sentence. He had published comments from Chechen rebel leaders. His publication was an organ of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, based in Nizhny Novgorod. The Society was dissolved by authorities last month.

Dmitry Kulakov, the prosecutor, said after Stomakhin's sentence that he was satisfied with the verdict.

Stomakhin's mother has disabilities. The court had taken her condition into account, states Interfax. Originally, the prosecutor had sought a seven-year jail term.

His indictment stated that "while writing about hostilities in the Republic of Chechnya, and about terror attacks carried out in Russia, Stomakhin expressed approval of the terrorists' crimes aiming to exterminate the Russian people as a nation."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 20, 2006 6:32 PM

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Posted by: bowen at November 21, 2006 5:55 PM

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