MOSCOW. June 16 (Interfax) - The Karelia penal colony has become a defendant in the administrative lawsuit filed by opposition activist Ildar Dadin contesting the actions of three agencies and compensation for moral damages, an Interfax correspondent has reported.
"The court has ruled to grant the defendant's request and made the federal budget establishment correction facility #7 for the Republic of Karelia a defendant in the administrative lawsuit filed by Ildar Ildusovich Dadin," Nelli Rubtsova, judge of the Moscow Zamoskvoretsky District Court, said.
On Friday, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court began hearing on its merits a lawsuit filed by Dadin, who is contesting the actions by three agencies that he believes have released to REN TV recordings from security cameras in the Karelia penal colony where he served his term.
The court on Friday also granted the plaintiff's request to send a repeat specified request to REN TV for information on the source of the video materials mentioned in the lawsuit and the recordings.
The hearing of the Dadin lawsuit will continue at noon on June 23.
Nikolai Zboroshenko, a representative of the opposition activist, earlier told Interfax Dadin demanded the involvement as defendants in the administrative lawsuit of the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Investigative Committee, and the Prosecutor General's Office. The activist later specified his demands and asked that the Finance Ministry also be involved as a defendant to recover 350,000 rubles in moral damages.
Dadin said he believes the illegal actions taken by the authorities represented by the said agencies were manifested in the release to third persons of recordings taken with surveillance systems and portable cameras in correction facility #7 in Segezh, Karelia, where he served his term. Dadin believes that resulted in the recordings falling into the hands of REN TV, which used them to make reports that were later recognized by the Public Collegium for Complaints about the Press as propaganda.
Zboroshenko said those actions affect Dadin's right to respect for privacy, "which includes the right to his image because the recordings fell into the hands of REN TV without his consent."
Dadin is the first and so far only person in Russia to have been convicted of repeat violations of the Criminal Code article dealing with the organization or holding of an assembly, rally, demonstration, march or picket, since its amendment in 2014.
In December 2015, he was found guilty and sentenced to a three-year prison term, which was later reduced to two and a half years. Initially, Dadin was sent to a penitentiary in Karelia and then to another in the Altai region. On February 22, 2017, the Russian Supreme Court overturned the ruling and ordered Dadin's release with a right to legal rehabilitation. On February 26, he was freed from the Altai penitentiary.
The Moscow region's Zheleznodorozhny Court, which heard Dadin's lawsuit, on May 31 ordered the Finance Ministry to pay him 2.2 million rubles for his illegal prosecution.