Prosecution asks for five years behind bars for Russian anarchists who hung ‘FSB is the main terrorist’ banner

The prosecution has requested five years in prison for Russian anarchists Dmitry Tsibukovsky and his wife Anastasia Safonova, who hung a banner saying “FSB is the main terrorist” on the Russian security service’s building, head of the Agora human rights group Pavel Chikov says.

Dmitry and Anastasia are accused of hooliganism motivated by political hatred. They were previously charged with vandalism for painting pictures protesting the pension reform on a transformer box, however, the prosecution dropped the charges due to the fact that the statute of limitations had expired.

The activists are being charged for hanging a banner on the regional FSB directorate protesting the security service’s actions in relation to the so-called Network case. Alleged members of the anti-government anarchist organisation were arrested in Penza in 2017 and sentenced to prison terms from 6 to 18 years in 2020.

The charges were previously dropped twice for absence of corpus delicti; however, the case was then reopened.

The activists were first held in a pre-trial detention facility. They were placed under de-facto house arrest in November 2020. A year later, the court revoked the two-and-a-half and two-year sentences for Tsibukovsky and Safonova. The case was then sent for further consideration.