Russian Forbes journalist placed under house arrest

NOS News•today, 10:18

A journalist who writes for the Russian edition of the American business magazine Forbes has been placed under house arrest by a court in Russia. Sergei Mingazov was arrested on Friday for spreading fake news about the Russian army.

The Russian journalist was arrested in his hometown of Khabarovsk, a city in the east of the country, and held in a detention center. Houses were also searched and computers and telephones were seized.

More than 400 bodies were found in Butcha after the withdrawal of Russian troops in April 2022. Some of them showed signs of torture. The Kremlin has consistently denied that Russian forces executed civilians in Butcha, saying the war crimes allegations are intended to portray Russia in a bad light.

Russia has been cracking down on criticism of the war since the invasion of Ukraine. New laws criminalize spreading ‘false information’ or discrediting the military.

According to his lawyer, Mingazov risks ten years in prison. He has been provisionally placed under house arrest for two months by the Khabarovsk court. He is also not allowed to have contact with people other than his family members, lawyers and doctors and has been completely banned from using the internet.

Several journalists, opposition members and citizens have been sentenced to long prison terms. One of the best known is the American Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been held in a Moscow prison for more than a year while awaiting trial. The longest sentence imposed was against prominent activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years.