In Stavropol Territory, case of student convicted for kindling ethnic enmity sent to revision

The Prosecutor's Office of the city of Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Territory, refused to uphold the verdict passed by the local city court to student Ilya Kartsev. According to Zakhar Kazaryan, senior assistant of the Public Prosecutor of the city of Nevinnomyssk, his boss brought in a cassation presentation - a complaint against legality of the verdict; and now the case of Nevinnomyssk gamer will be reconsidered by the Territorial Court, the panel on criminal cases.

Let us remind you that the City Court of Nevinnomyssk sentenced Ilya Kartsev, a former participant of the Internet project "Big Game. Break the System", to one year of conditional imprisonment for extremism and xenophobia. On May 25 the young man was found guilty under Article 282 ("Kindling ethnic enmity") of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Earlier Kartsev had already been convicted under two articles: "Willingly false report about terror act" and "Hooliganism". He made a dummy bomb and planted it to the door of the local FSB division. As revealed by the investigation, it was the mission formulated for him by moderators and activists of the Internet project "Big Game. Break the System".

Ilya Kartsev's defence believes that convicting him to the term, though conditional, under Article 282 ("Kindling ethnic enmity") is unfair. "The prosecutor's office has brought a new case on two-year-old facts," said Roman Belan, the convict's advocate. "The investigation has suddenly learnt that back in 2008 my client disseminated self-made banknotes with an inscription 'Don't buy from blacks'. Allegedly, at the first investigation these facts were unknown."

Nevertheless, the verdict passed to Ilya Kartsev by the Nevinnomyssk City Court is quite satisfactory for the defence; while the prosecution, on the contrary, believes that his punishment is too lenient.

The project "Big Game. Break the System" was created in December 2007 by a group of radical nationalists "Northern Brotherhood" and invited the players to take part in fighting against the present political regime and natives of the republics of the Caucasus by means of the Internet game. Each player as a "fighter" passed through several levels of the game. The higher the level of the "fighter", the more complex was the task for his real prototype. For example, if at the first level the "street fighters" were offered to disseminate leaflets with symbols of the pagan god Svarog, already on the sixth level the players were called to destroy barracks or trading booths, where "aliens" (the name for Caucasians in the game) live and work.

Courts of the Russian Federation have already claimed the Internet game "Big Game. Break the System" as extremist one. However, the prosecutor's office reports nothing about similar trials in the territory of the Stavropol Territory. Today, Ilya Kartsev is also the only person punished for illegal actions under the above Internet game.