The defense hopes to mitigate the punishment for Shchepikhin

When considering the case of blogger Areg Shchepikhin, the court must take into account the personality disorder diagnosed in him, even if it did not influence the commission of the crime, according to lawyers.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, the participants in the abduction of blogger Areg Shchepikhin at the Yaroslavsky Station in Moscow, three of whom presented IDs of employees of the Russian Guard Directorate for Chechnya, were released on their own recognizance. The court arrested Shchepikhin himself for two months in the case of calls for extremism and incitement of hatred. On June 26, Shchepikhin apologized in court to residents of the Caucasus, stating that he repents, but the court refused to soften his preventive measure. The final indictment charges Shchepikhin with three criminal offenses1, the defense considers the article on insulting religious feelings to be excessive and intends to seek its exclusion from the charges. On July 29, the court extended Shchepikhin’s arrest for six months, until January 22.

Areg Shchepikhin, who was not brought to the scheduled court hearing today, feels fine and does not complain about the conditions of detention, the blogger's lawyer Andrei Bezverkhny told "Caucasian Knot".

"He has no clashes with his cellmates, and even when I saw him last, he asked not to be moved out of this cell. His relatives visit him, but not very often, he asked, so that they would bring cigarettes,” the lawyer noted.

He noted that all the charges brought against the blogger were based on the videos he had published, although Shchepikhin himself had referred to a certain unpublished video at the last hearing in July. “He published them and then wanted to delete them, but his VPN wasn’t working,” the defense attorney explained.

The mixed personality disorder that Shchepikhin was diagnosed with “must definitely be taken into account,” he added. “Based on my experience in similar cases, it’s possible to end up in a penal colony here,” Bezverkhny noted.

Lawyer Evgeny Smirnov, who is not associated with the case, confirmed that Shchepikhin’s diagnosis should be taken into account by the court. “If the examination established that this disorder did not affect the crime committed, then there are no clear instructions in the law, the court is simply obliged to take into account the state of health. Like a broken arm or some other disease," he told the "Caucasian Knot."

Today's hearing on Shchepikhin's case did not take place, the trial was postponed until 2 p.m. Moscow time on September 8. Presnensky District Court Judge Elena Abramova said that the defendant was not delivered to court "probably due to the loss of the request for delivery by the detention center."

* Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.