MOSCOW. Aug 30 (Interfax) - The defense team for Anna Pavlikova, who has been charged with extremism, has asked the court to close the case against the New Greatness movement due to the absence of any crime in the suspects' actions.
"According to the case materials studied by the defense team and also the evidence attached to this petition, the criminal case was exclusively the product of operatives' provocation [...]. I ask [the court] to close the case due to the absence of any crime in the suspects' actions," Pavlikova's lawyer Olga Karlova said in a petition forwarded to the investigator in charge of the case. A copy of the document was shared with Interfax.
According to the case files, the case against the New Greatness movement was the result of a provocation staged by secret witness Ruslan D., whose testimony provided the basis for investigators' work, the lawyer said.
"According to his testimony, he found premises where the [movement's] members gathered, where money was collected from the members, and where the founding documents of New Greatness were prepared," Karlova said.
The lawyer said at a press conference on Thursday that a request had been lodged on Pavlikova's behalf the day before, asking the court to close the criminal case against her.
"We are citing the fact that she was dragged into this organization by this man, and then she left the organization, and returned to it under pressure from him. And we know that if a person leaves voluntarily, this person is exempt from criminal prosecution," Karlova said.
Pavlikova's mother has filed a motion, demanding that Ruslan D. be brought to justice for involving an underage citizen into a grave crime motivated by political hatred, she said.
"Let's see what the investigation will do and how the Prosecutor's Office will react to this [...] Our fight is just beginning," Karlova said.
Pavlikova and another nine activists of the New Greatness movement were detained in March 2018 and were accused by investigators of seeking to overthrow Russia's constitutional system and set up an interim government. Their lawyers have said that the charges filed against their clients are based on testimony given by law enforcement officials who infiltrated the group during the investigation. The suspects have been charged with setting up an extremist community and participating in it.
Pavlikova and another suspect, Maria Dubovik, in whose support human rights activists and the lawyers launched a large-scale public campaign, were released from the remand center and transferred to house arrest at investigators' request on August 16.