Jailed former Moscow municipal deputy charged with ‘justifying terrorism’

A former municipal deputy from Moscow who was sentenced to seven years in prison for “spreading knowingly false information about the Russian military” has been issued with an additional charge for “justifying terrorism”, a group of his supporters announced on Friday.

Alexey Gorinov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in July last year for calling the events in Ukraine a “war” instead of the officially sanctioned term “special military operation”, has reportedly been transferred to a punitive isolation cell in a pretrial detention centre.

In a recent letter to supporters, Gorinov said he believed that the authorities were trying to make an example of his case by pressing fresh charges against him so that “others would see and keep their mouths shut”.

Gorinov underwent interrogation in jail by several officers of the Federal Security Service in early September, during which he was asked whether he had any connections with “terrorist or extremist” organisations.