Sentence of journalist from Kadmykia Badmaev angers his supporters

There is no crime in the actions of Valery Badmaev, the editor-in-chief of the “Sovremennaya Kalmykia” (Modern Kalmykia): he was convicted for reposting a video, but did not voice his opinion, advocates emphasized in the Supreme Court (SC) of Kalmykia. A public prosecutor requested the court to toughen the punishment, but the court left the sentence unchanged.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on November 9, public prosecutors requested the court to sentence the 72-year-old journalist to three years of imprisonment. Valery Badmaev and his defence requested an acquittal due to the lack of proof of the charges and the lack of corpus delicti. On November 13, the court sentenced Valery Badmaev to a fine of 150,000 roubles and banned him from publishing materials on the Internet for two years*. The Supreme Court (SC) of Kalmykia refused to commute the sentence and upheld both the fine and the ban.

Advocate Semyon Ateev has emphasized that the examination did not find that the video contained a statement about the actions of the Russian Army in fact. The defender has also noted that the translator involved in the case was not unbiased, being a refugee from Ukraine. She is a person who fiercely hates everything connected with Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Semyon Ateev has pointed out.

Lyudmila, a resident of Elista, who came to court to support Valery Badmaev, says that the journalist is being persecuted for his activities in general: “As long as I have known him, he always expresses his opinion. He always stands for human rights and compliance with all the laws.”

“I believe that the persecution of the oldest public figure in Kalmykia is persecution for political reasons. Since there is no crime in the actions of Valery Badmaev, and that fact has been proven by an expert from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA),” activist Boris Todaev stated.

The activist believes the law is selective.

“The authorities have always looked for any reason to ‘shut the mouth’ of their critics and even better to deprive a person of his/her civil rights through repression and arbitrariness, pinning on him/her criminal sins he/she never committed. And this is happening not only in Kalmykia, but throughout the country, especially in the Caucasus,” activist Boris Todaev concluded.

*A clarification has been put on the paragraph at 11:27 a.m. Moscow time on February 14.