Father of Sochi engineer Alexei Schus is stunned by his son's sentence

A court in Sochi has found Alexei Schus, an engineer, guilty of spreading fake news about the Russian Army motivated by hatred and sentenced him to 5.5 years in colony. He was also banned from administering websites for three years, the human rights project "OVD-Info"* has reported.

Alexei and his family hoped for an acquittal in the case of fake news about the Russian Army; the sentence will be appealed against. The elderly father has expressed doubt that he would be able to live on till his son's release.

According to Vasily Schus, the father, at his age of 81, he remained the only breadwinner for Alexei's family, which has a young child. His father fails to understand what benefit the state gets from the fact that the family is essentially destroyed and deprived of the opportunity to reunite for 5.5 years.

"Will I live on to see my son? I don't know," the father said. He was also upset that his son was led around in handcuffs like an especially dangerous criminal.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the Russian State Duma had adopted a law expanding the grounds for including citizens into the list of extremists and terrorists; and now one can be included into this list for the crimes motivated by hatred or enmity. Inclusion into the register is a repressive measure and threatens many natives of Southern Russia, while challenging these rulings is almost impossible, lawyers have noted.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.