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Pomor Ivan Moseev turns to European Court of Human Rights

Ivan Moseev is leader of the Pomor movement in Arkhangelsk.

Ivan Moseev, head of the Pomor society and former Director of the Pomor Institute at the University of Arkhangelsk, who was found guilty of extremism, has turned to the European Court of Human Rights.

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In his complaint to the European Court of Human Rights Moseev claims that the Russian court violated paragraph 6 of the European Convention for Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial. Moseev says the verdict against him was not fair. He has tried complaining it to all higher judicial instances, but his case has been declined.  

Moseev has asked the European Court of Human Rights to claim a “fair compensation” for moral damage, his lawyer Damir Gaynutdinov says to Lenta.

Moseev was fined 100 000 rubles (app €2,245) in a verdict of March 2013 saying he was guilty of violating Article 281, part 1 of the criminal code of Russia. The paragraph covers actions aimed at derogation of a group of persons on the features of nationality and origination being made publicly with use of mass media aids.

The accusation was based on a single word Ivan Moseev according to the investigators used in a comment on an Internet forum in April 2012.  In the comment Russians were called “Scum.” The editor of the web site found that this comment had been sent from Moseev’s IP-address and informed FSB about this. Moseev totally denies his guilt saying he never posted the comment. According to Moseev and his lawyer, the materials in the case show that Moseev did not write the comment.

In a comment to BarentsObserver after the trial, Moseev called the charges against him “one of the dirtiest cases fabricated by the regional FSB”.

On list of terrorists and extremists
After the verdict, Moseev was put on Russia’s list over terrorists and extremists. By order of the procurator he was dismissed from his post at the university and excluded membership in any Russian public organizations. He is also blocked from having a bank account.

The list is put up by the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) – a federal executive body responsible for combating money laundering and terrorist financing. The organ also acts as a national center for the assessment of threats to national security arising from money laundering, financing of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and for the development of measures to counter these threats.

First accused of high treason in favor of Norway
Ivan Moseev was first accused by FSB for cooperating with Norwegian secret services to destabilize the social-political situation in Arkhangelsk, but these charges were dropped in the first court hearings.

Ivan Moseev has been a primus motor in re-establishing the cultural and historical relations between Arkhangelsk and the town of Vardø in northern Norway. Pomor trade was carried out between the population living around the coast of the White Sea and the coastal population in Northern Norway in the period from 1740 until the Russian revolution. Norway’s most northeastern fishing town Vardø was the gateway to the neighbors in the west for many of the Russians sailing from the White Sea area.

Since the establishment of the Barents cooperation 20 years ago, the historical link between Arkhangelsk and Vardø has again gained focus.