The first hearing on the merits of the Skochilenko case has been held. “Paper”

On Thursday, December 15, the Vasileostrovskiy District Court held the first session on the merits in the case of Sasha Skochilenko. The artist is accused of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army out of “political hatred”. The girl was detained on April 11 due to the fact that she replaced five price tags in the Perekrestok store with leaflets with pacifist statements.

The next meeting will be held on January 20 at 14:00.

position of the prosecution. The prosecutor read out the plot of the accusation, the correspondent reports. “Paper”. According to the prosecution, Skochilenko placed five sheets of paper instead of price tags in the Perekrestok store at 88 Maly Prospekt Vasilyevsky Island in order to “promote a negative assessment of the use of the Russian army in Ukraine”.

The price tags said:

🟢 “The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol, about 400 people hid in it from shelling”;

🟢 “Russian conscripts are sent to Ukraine. The price of this war is the lives of our children. Stop the war”;

🟢 “In the first three days, 4,300 Russian soldiers died. Why is this silent on television?

🟢 “Putin has been lying to us from TV screens for 20 years. The result of this lie is our readiness to justify war and senseless deaths”;

🟢 “My great-grandfather participated in the Great Patriotic War for four years, not for Russia to become a fascist state and attack Ukraine.”

Defense position. Sasha Skochilenko pleaded not guilty to disseminating deliberately false information.

One of Skochilenko’s lawyers, Yuri Novolodsky, read out the artist’s attitude to the accusation:

🟢 “I do not deny the fact that certain information is being disseminated using trademarks. But I categorically deny the fact that this information was obviously not true for me”;

🟢 “I assess the attempts of the prosecution authorities to prove my non-existent guilt in committing a crime as pathetic and untenable”;

🟢 “The investigator came to the conclusion that the information posted on the price tags is false. The basis for such a conclusion was the naive conviction that the information provided by official state bodies is always true. Happy man! I would like to be like that”;

🟢 “I categorically declare that on the day I disseminated information on the price tags of the Perekrestok store, I did not realize that I could disseminate information that did not correspond to reality. This most important circumstance must be carefully examined.

The defense also has claims against the prosecution. Novolodsky said that in the presence of lawyers, the investigator who signed the indictment said that he was not involved in its preparation. According to the lawyer, the investigator resigned.

In addition, Sasha Skochilenko stated that the linguistic expert who checked her leaflets went beyond his competence. Experts evaluated five statements on the stickers and decided that they were false. As Skochilenko and lawyers point out, questions about the reliability of facts are not the responsibility of linguists.

Yana Nepovinnova, the defendant’s lawyer, told “Paper”that the defense hopes that Skochilenko will be found not guilty.

“We expect that after this, the court will form an internal conviction about the complete absurdity of this accusation and the innocence of Alexandra. And the process will proceed in an ethical format, since we have repeatedly said that the prosecutor must comply with the code of professional ethics and not rise above the defense and respect the court and other participants in the process, ”said Nepovinnova.

At the end of the meeting, Skochilenko handed over questions to the prosecution. The artist asks the prosecutor to clarify what exactly her political hatred was expressed in, what parts of her statements the accusations were brought against, and whether the episodes that later turned out to be truthful information will be excluded from the case.

Details. Sasha’s partner Skochilenka Sonya and her friend Alexei were removed from the courtroom before the hearing, as they are witnesses in the case. However, they were already interrogated by the defense in a preliminary hearing, and the prosecution did not declare them as witnesses.

“I want to hear how and for what my closest person is being judged. But for emotional pressure on Sasha, I was made a witness from the very beginning. Of course, I hope that this will end with a suspended sentence or a fine, but nothing can be predicted, ”shared with “Paper” partner of Sasha Sonya.

At the meeting, Sasha Skochilenko was left in a cage, although the defense asked to let the girl out of it.

What you need to know. Sasha has been in jail since April 13th. The artist is accused of spreading “fake news” about the Russian army – she allegedly posted anti-war leaflets instead of price tags at Perekrestok. Now she faces up to 10 years in prison.

In early December, the BBC included Sasha Skochilenko in the list of the most inspiring and influential women in the world.

Cover photo: Andrey Bok