Conviction record lifted from imam of Pyatigorsk

On February 7, 2008, the Khamovniki Court of Moscow ruled to cancel the conviction record from Anton Stepanenko, imam of the city of Pyatigorsk, under the verdict of the Pyatigorsk City Court of the Stavropol Territory of March 30, 2007.

The "Sova" Information and Analytical Centre reports that Anton (or Abdallakh in Islam) Stepanenko was found guilty by the Pyatigorsk City Court guilty under part 1, Article 282 of the RF Criminal Code ("Excitation of hatred or enmity, or humiliation of human dignity"), however, he was released from punishment because of expiry of the limitation period. Charges under points a and c, part 2, Article 163 of the RF Criminal Code ("Extortion") were re-qualified into Article 330 ("Arbitrariness").

The Prosecutor's Office refused to charge A. Stepanenko under points a and g, part 2, Article 127 ("Illegal deprivation of freedom").

The "Caucasian Knot" informed earlier that the court had sentenced imam Stepanenko to 14 months of conditional imprisonment.

Andrei Grudin, another defendant in the same case, was sentenced to 3.5 years of conditional imprisonment. He was found guilty under points a and g, part 2, Article 127 of the RF Criminal Code, while charges under points a and c, part 2, Article 163 of the RF Criminal Code were also re-qualified into charges under Article 330.

Anton Stepanenko was detained on January 25 this year in the city mosque of Pyatigorsk. Initially he was accused of illegal deprivation of freedom and extortion: in June 2004, Anton, his brother Evgeniy and his friend Andrei Grudin allegedly kept by force for 24 hours certain Boris Martynov and Timofei Panasyuk in the room of the local computer club and extorted from them, by different evidences, from 30 to 50 thousand roubles.

The Muslim community of Pyatigorsk earlier informed that this charge was fabricated by power structures: Martynov, 19, earlier convicted for larceny was forced to evidence against the imam.

Anton (Abdallakh) Stepanenko, a Russian, born in 1980, a native of Khabarovsk, entered Islam in 1997 and from 2004 is an imam of the Pyatigorsk mosque. Imam Stepanenko has regularly called his parishioners to abstain from extremist views and held public actions of antiterrorist character.