On February 15, the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg held the first hearing on the suit of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region against Irina Fatyanova, the former head of Navalny’s city headquarters (recognized as extremist, the activities of the headquarters are prohibited in Russia).
As the participants in the meeting told Fontanka, in court, police representatives disclosed information about the units that worked during the days of the January protests.
In particular, law enforcement was provided by employees of a separate security battalion of diplomatic missions and consulates of foreign states, more than a hundred employees of the regiment for the protection and escort of suspects and accused, as well as hundreds of employees of the department of special psychophysiological studies, the department of in-cell development, employees of the operational-investigative unit, the department of force control and means in emergency circumstances, employees of departments for combating illegal circulation of excisable goods, departments for detecting, suppressing and solving crimes in the field of housing and communal services, environmental management, equity participation, gambling, counterfeiting and the military-industrial complex, departments for combating tax crimes, departments for combating ethnic criminal groups and a department for identifying unidentified corpses.
In response to a question from Fatyanova’s representative, lawyer Varvara Mikhailova, why it was necessary to involve such specialists, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that all employees are universal and can, among other things, be engaged in the protection of public order.
“The claims suggest that the defendant, as an organizer of public events, should be disproportionately responsible for the actions of other persons, which she could not even influence, since it does not follow from the case materials that on January 23, 2021 she was present on Senatskaya Square or Nevsky Prospekt, and on January 31, 2021, she was completely under administrative arrest, ”Mikhailova said in court.
The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region is demanding 3.9 million rubles from Fatyanova for the fact that the security forces had to work overtime at protests on January 23 and 31 last year.
