Volgograd resident Nikita Zhuravel, who was arrested on charges of insulting the feelings of believers after burning the Koran, will stand trial in Chechnya, the republic's Minister of National Policy Akhmed Dudayev said.
“Here he will be judged, here he will serve his sentence, because he encroached on the feelings of Muslim believers. With us here, I think he will find his punishment within the law,” he said .
Lawyer Nikolai Polozov, in a conversation with The Insider, said that the decision to send the case to Chechnya was made in order to intimidate the population and prevent the occurrence of such cases in the future:
“Of course, this is all done solely as a deterrent. It doesn't make any practical sense. We know what reputation the Chechen Republic enjoys under the leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov. And all Russians are well aware of this. Therefore, in this case, this was done only in order to use the example of this particular accused to try to intimidate the rest of the population. In fact, we see this in a number of other cases. For example, cases of “discrediting” and so on, when they simply use the example of specific people to show what terms they can endure so that others remain silent. Here the authorities use the "educational effect".
From the point of view of the Criminal Procedure Code, this can be done. In this case, we are talking about subordination. The head of the Investigative Committee has the right to change this jurisdiction. As for the jurisdiction, that is, the consideration of the case itself, it is not a fact that it will be the Chechen Republic. Another question is that at the investigation stage they can do whatever they want with this person. We know very well what they did with the Ukrainians who ended up there, for example, with Karpyuk, Klykh [Nikolay Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykh are Ukrainian political prisoners who were sentenced in the case of involvement in the massacres of Russian soldiers in Chechnya in the period 1994-1995 – The Insider ], who were subjected to both torture and psychotropic drugs. What will this person be like before the court after the investigation, what will happen to him – again, the question. No human rights activists in Chechnya, unfortunately, will be able to do anything. Sad fate for this man.
This does not necessarily mean that all such cases will now be sent to Chechnya. They expect that indicatively one person will be punished and there will be no other cases. But if this happens again, then it will be possible to say that a new repressive practice has been formed, which provides for special cruelty in relation to the accused.”
Chechen human rights activist Abubakar Yangulbaev believes that if the Russian authorities want to prosecute those who insult Islam in the Russian Federation, they should first of all pay attention to the actions of President Vladimir Putin:
“Kadyrov has simply been given the absolute right to punish all those who persecute Islam in Russia. Since Kadyrov has such a right, he must first demolish Putin, because it was on Putin's orders that houses and mosques in Chechnya were bombed, and the Korans were burned there.
Kadyrov continues to build the image of a defender of Muslims, faith, Islam, the Koran and the like. He bought the regalia for himself, like everything else that he has, and continues this course of propaganda. This is almost suitable for indirect state propaganda when the West and East are played against each other, where the West is atheism, and the East is religion.
This corresponds to propaganda, the state course and the escalation of the scarecrow in the form of Kadyrov, who supposedly has absolute power, but in fact his absoluteness is a props based solely on strength, and he uses this scheme with stereotypes in general to intimidate the population.”
The Russian human rights activist, who wished to remain anonymous, also told The Insider that the decision to transfer the case to Chechnya was arbitrary and a concession to the Chechen authorities for the sake of their PR:
“In this case, this is arbitrariness, this is a concession to the Chechen authorities, who want to show themselves as such defenders of Islam in Russia. No wonder such a campaign started from Chechnya and organized victims who began to write and demand to be recognized as victims. This is such a PR of the Chechen authorities, they say, we are the defenders of Islam throughout Russia. When the Chechen region wants something from the federal region, and if this does not at all contradict the interests of the federal authorities, then they usually follow their lead and give in to any requests, pressure, demands of the Chechen authorities. Will it result in further systematic practice? It may come out, or it may not."
On May 22, a Volgograd court arrested 19-year-old Zhuravel for two months, RIA Novosti reports . The agency also released a video in which the Volgograd citizen apologized to the Muslims of the world and stated that it was a "very bad act."
During the interrogation, Zhuravel stated that he burned the Koran “at the direction of the special services of Ukraine for a reward of 10 thousand rubles” and handed over the record of the action to the SBU officer. Subsequently, the Russian media, citing sources in law enforcement agencies, reported that they had allegedly discovered a trace of American intelligence services in the case.
A Volgograd citizen was charged with “insulting the feelings of believers” (Part 2 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The maximum penalty under this article is up to three years in prison. By personal order of the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, he will be investigated in Chechnya.
Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko told TASS that he considers it “necessary and correct” to send Zhuravel to a correctional colony in a region dominated by the Muslim population after the verdict. “This will promote respect for religion and the religious feelings of believers in our multinational and multi-confessional country,” Chuichenko said.
The video with the burning of the Koran against the backdrop of the mosque was published on May 19, one of the first to be published by the Telegram channel “Morning of Dagestan”, writes V1.ru. The video lasts 11 seconds, it shows the filmer, the Koran with burning pages and the mosque. In April, the Telegram channel "Morning of Dagestan" was also one of the first to publish a video of the burning of the Koran in Moscow.
As stated in the message of the Investigative Committee, the video was filmed near the Cathedral Mosque on Povorinskaya Street in Volgograd and published "on an Internet portal controlled by the Center for Information and Psychological Operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
"Mediazona" noted that the video of Zhuravel's detention and interrogation published by the FSB contained a lot of clippings. In this video , a young man is riding a bicycle with a backpack from the Samokat delivery service when law enforcers who jumped out of the minibus rush at him. The suspect is pushed into a minibus, and his bike is left lying on the road. Then follows the gluing, after which the young man in the video is already lying face down on the floor. “For what reason was he detained?” they ask him. He replies: "I filmed fighter jets." “We are interested in what you did on May 4,” the security official corrects him and demands to “step by step” tell how he “came” to the burning of the Koran.
“People wrote to me on Telegram… a Telegram channel from Ukraine… they just run a Telegram channel and want to help their country… They offered me some money,” the young man replies.
This is followed by gluing again, and in the new video a man with a blurred face is already standing at the wall and pronouncing the text: “I acquired the Koran on the instructions of the SBU and burned it on May 4, 2023”, “sent the video materials to the SBU employees”, and “for this work they had to pay 10 thousand rubles.
According to V1.ru, Zhuravel is a native of Sevastopol. For the last few years he has been living in Volgograd and studying at the Volgograd State Social and Pedagogical University.