Sergei Reznik, Freelance
Medium:Internet
Charge:Retaliatory
Imprisoned:November 26, 2013

Regional authorities in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, jailed Reznik immediately after the Pervomaiskiy District Court convicted him of insulting a public official, bribery, and deliberately misleading authorities, the regional news website Kavkazsky Uzel reported. The court sentenced him to jail for 18 months.

News reports said Reznik had maintained a personal blog on the popular platform LiveJournal and had contributed reporting to regional news outlets, including the website Yuzhnyi Federalnyi. His articles for the website criticized municipal and regional authorities and alleged widespread corruption and abuses.

Authorities filed charges against Reznik in November 2012, saying that an investigation of the blogger had shown that Reznik had staged threats he reported receiving in February 2012 as part of demands to stop publishing his articles. Officials accused Reznik of misleading them. Authorities also said that the blogger had bribed a car shop mechanic to get an inspection sticker for his vehicle.

Reznik was also charged with insult in connection with a series of articles he posted on his personal blog in which he accused the chairwoman of the Regional Arbitration Court of corruption and nepotism, local and international media reported.

He has denied all charges, according to news reports.

A month before he was sentenced, Reznik was attacked by two unidentified men outside his apartment building. The blogger and his wife were beaten and shot at, according to news reports. Authorities have failed to bring to justice those responsible for the attack.

Reznik and Yuri Kastrubin, his defense lawyer, appealed the sentence, but the Rostov Regional Court upheld the lower court's ruling in April 2014, Kavkazsky Uzel reported.

In July 2014, authorities opened a new criminal case against the blogger. A regional prosecutor and two police agents filed separate complaints against Reznik, accusing him of libel and publishing deliberately false information about them, according to Kavkazsky Uzel and other reports, which did not specify which articles. Reznik denied the accusations in court.

The Leninsky District Court in Rostov began hearing the case in August, but closed the proceedings to the public and the press, Kavkazsky Uzel reported. If Reznik is convicted, his prison term could be extended for up to three years, reports said.

Reznik was being held at a pretrial detention facility in Rostov-on-Don, the independent Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported in August 2014.

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