Administrative arrest of Anna Gritsevich appealed against

The defence of Anna Gritsevich, a correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot", has lodged an appeal complaint to the Krasnodar Territorial Court against the judgement of the Adler District Court of Sochi, which sentenced her to a three-day administrative arrest for disobeying the police.

Anna Gritsevich and the ecologist Vladimir Kimaev were detained on June 29 this year in the village of Chereshnya, when policemen were inspecting a garbage dump, created by the authorities after the flooding in Sochi on June 25, against which local residents were protesting. On July 6, the Adler District Court of Sochi arrested Gritsevich for three days; a day later, a similar sentence was imposed on Kimaev.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Anna Gritsevich was released on July 9. Her defence believes that the above judgement was "illegal and subject to cancellation", says the complaint sent to the Krasnodar Territorial Court.

"The court has ignored the fact that Gritsevich, while fulfilling her editorial assignment, was making a video footage of the conflict of local residents with the police. Gritsevich herself did not interfere with the passage of machinery; she did not organize locals' protests against the dump and did not take part in them – she only performed her professional duty as a journalist," said the advocate Alexander Popkov.

According to his story, the above judgement also pointed out that the information that Gritsevich had organized a public event was not confirmed.

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