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The Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg has returned the case of human rights defender Alexey Sokolov, accused of repeated display of banned symbols (part 1 article 282.4 of the Criminal Code), to the prosecutor’s office due to violations. This was reported by RusNews.

Judge Alexander Suslov pointed out that the case materials do not specify the location of the alleged offence Sokolov is charged with, which means it is impossible to reliably determine the court’s jurisdiction. He also noted that investigators are calculating Sokolov’s period of “inaction” in relation to the published posts from the moment the investigator discovered them, rather than from the time of publication, as required by law.

The case against the human rights defender was opened in the summer of 2024. Before this, he was arrested for five days under an administrative offence for displaying prohibited symbols (part 1 article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences) because the “Human Rights Defenders of the Urals” website featured an icon with the Facebook logo, linking to the organisation’s page on that social network.

According to the investigation, after this Sokolov went on to display the Facebook logo in the “Human Rights Defenders of the Urals” Telegram channel. This refers to posts containing links to the social network. Sokolov insists he did not publish these posts.

In July, Sokolov was sent to a pre-trial detention centre (SIZO). While there, he was placed in solitary confinement at least twice for spurious reasons. In January 2025, he was released from custody.

The human rights defender has said that following his arrest, law enforcement officers beat him, but the Investigative Committee refused to open a case regarding this information.

Sokolov links his prosecution to his human rights work. A few days before his arrest, the publication Ura.ru released a piece about violence against prisoners at Correctional Colony No. 10 in Yekaterinburg, based on materials collected by the rights defender. On the day Sokolov’s home was searched, he had planned to publish a video showing torture of prisoners. The human rights defender stated that during the search, law enforcement were specifically looking for this video.

On 25 September, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court overturned the lower court’s decision to return Alexey Sokolov’s criminal case to the prosecutor’s office, according to “Human Rights Defenders of the Urals.”

His case will once again be sent to the Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg for consideration on its merits.

  • In March 2022, the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow designated Meta—the company that owns Facebook and Instagram—as an extremist organisation and banned its activities in Russia. The decision was triggered by a change in Facebook and Instagram’s moderation rules concerning posts calling for violence against Russian soldiers in the context of the invasion of Ukraine.