Areg Shchepikhin was sentenced to a prison term

A Moscow court sentenced blogger Areg Shchepikhin to five years in prison after he was abducted by Chechen security forces at a Moscow train station. 

As reported by the " Caucasian Knot ," the trial of Areg Shchepikhin reached the closing arguments today, and the state prosecutor requested a six-year prison sentence for the blogger. 

Moscow's Presnensky District Court sentenced blogger Areg Shchepikhin to five years in prison, a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reported. Shchepikhin's lawyer, Oksana Sotnikova, said his defense intends to appeal the verdict.

As an additional punishment, he was banned from administering websites and publishing materials online for two and a half years after his release. The prosecutor had previously requested that Shchepikhin be banned from administering internet pages for four years.

In his final statement before sentencing, Shchepikhin repented again, asking not to be imprisoned. "Please forgive me. I want to serve my sentence differently, but not in prison," Mediazona quoted him as saying (he was added to the Russian Ministry of Justice's register of foreign agents) . Even before the trial began, on June 26, Shchepikhin apologized in court to residents of the Caucasus, declaring his remorse. 

The participants in the abduction of blogger Areg Shchepikhin at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station, three of whom presented identification as officers of the Russian National Guard Directorate for Chechnya, have been released on their own recognizance. Shchepikhin himself faces  three criminal charges in the final indictment.1

At the hearing on September 29, prosecution witnesses stated that the blogger called for "beating Chechens and Dagestanis" in his videos.