The co-chair of Golos, who was sentenced to five years, has been transferred to an unknown location.

Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the Golos movement, who was sentenced to five years in prison, has been transferred from a Moscow pre-trial detention centre to an unknown location. This was reported by the movement itself, citing lawyer Mikhail Biryukov.

According to the lawyer, the sentence has not yet entered into legal force, and Melkonyants’ appeal has not yet been reviewed. The convicted person did not even have the chance to receive the official court ruling. He was being held in Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 1 in Moscow.

In mid-May, a Moscow court found Melkonyants guilty under the article on running an “undesirable organisation” (Part 3, Article 284.1 of the Russian Criminal Code) and sentenced him to five years in prison.

According to the investigation, he organised the activities of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organisations (ENEMO) in Russia, which was declared “undesirable” in 2021, and the Golos movement was considered its structural subdivision.

Golos itself denies this. They explain that the founder of ENEMO was the Golos Association, which in fact ceased its operations after being recognised as a “foreign agent” in 2013, and was officially dissolved in 2020. The Golos movement, which was created in 2013, did not join ENEMO and was not its founder. Melkonyants is the leader of the movement itself.

Law enforcement conducted searches at the homes of Golos movement participants in August 2023. Melkonyants was detained at that time and, as a suspect in the case on the “undesirable” organisation, was sent to a pre-trial detention centre.

On 10 July, Grigory Melkonyants was transferred to Komi, a region in northern Russia, according to SOTA. This became known from a response by the Federal Penitentiary Service to a letter sent to the convicted person.