The defense appealed the verdict against Areg Shchepikhin.

An appeal has been filed against the sentence of blogger Areg Shchepikhin, who was sentenced to five years in prison after being abducted by Chechen security forces, his lawyer announced.

As reported by the Caucasian Knot, the state prosecutor requested a six-year prison sentence for blogger Areg Shchepikhin, who was accused of extremism and insulting believers after being abducted by Chechen security forces at a Moscow train station. The court sentenced him to five years in prison. The defense announced that it will appeal the verdict. Shchepikhin told the court that he had been receiving threats from certain competitors for a long time and recorded a video with ethnic insults to tell them to "stay away."

Areg Shchepikhin's appointed lawyer, Oksana Sotnikova, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that she has already filed an appeal against the verdict. Sotnikova declined to comment on the substance of the complaint or the defense's position presented therein.

The Shchepikhin case file on the website of the Presnensky District Court of Moscow as of 8:33 PM Moscow time contains no information about the appeal of the verdict, nor is there information about the defense filing an appeal on the Moscow City Court website.

Sotnikova previously told the "Caucasian Knot" that the appeal would likely only result in a reduction of Shchepikhin's prison term, rather than a suspended sentence, which she believes is appropriate.

As a reminder, an outpatient psychiatric examination found no mental disorders in Areg Shchepikhin that could have influenced the commission of the crime, the prosecutor noted. Earlier, the court stated that Shchepikhin was diagnosed with mixed personality disorder during an examination, and, according to lawyers interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot," the court is obliged to take this diagnosis into account. "Judging by my experience in similar cases, it is possible to end up in a penal colony here," lawyer Bezverkhny stated.

In a video from June 3, Areg Shchepikhin called for persuading the Russian authorities to expel Muslims "to the Caucasus" and "Jews" from Russia, since, according to him, "the people have chosen the path of Christianity." He also uttered insults against Chechens and Dagestanis. On June 3rd alone, two videos containing insults against Muslims were published on his blog. The "Caucasian Knot" has prepared a report titled "Chechen Security Forces vs. Areg Shchepikhin: Kidnapping or Detention?".

The participants in the kidnapping of Areg Shchepikhin at 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 was charged with three criminal offenses 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.

The name of Yerevan native Areg Shchepikhin was added to the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists on July 9. Adding someone to the Rosfinmonitoring list restricts their financial transactions: those on the list can spend no more than 10,000 rubles per month on themselves and the same amount for each family member without income. Shchepikhin was born Oganesyan; according to his sister, he became Shchepikhin after marrying in 2012, taking his wife's surname ("to make it easier to work in government agencies").