Judgment on Alexander Valov's arrest challenged after his release from IVS

Alexander Valov, the editor-in-chief of the "BlogSochi", was unlawfully arrested for five days for organizing a mass event in the Olympic village in Sochi, since his actions did not violate the law. This was stated by the defenders, who filed an appeal against the court decision. Alexander Valov himself has claimed the falsification of the court decision.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on June 3, Alexander Valov, together with Dmitry Saltykovsky, an employee of the US "HBO" TV Channel, and TV journalists from the United States, was detained. Law enforcers claimed that the detainees had violated the border regime. The US journalists were released, Dmitry Saltykovsky was fined by the court, and Alexander Valov was sentenced to a five-day arrest on the charge of violating the rules of an assembly.

According to advocate Alexander Popkov, a member of the international human rights group "Agora", the appeal requests to question eight witnesses. The defenders insist on the absence of elements of administrative offence allegedly committed by Alexander Valov.

Alexander Valov has served his sentence at the IVS (temporary detention facility), and on June 8, he was released.

According to advocate Mikhail Okhrimenko, Alexander Valov was unreasonably brought to responsibility. The advocate has noted that in the court's judgment on the arrest contains no indication of whether Alexander Valov could be aware of the fact that he had entered the border zone. Furthermore, there is no indication of how the border zone is designated.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.