Watchdog

A Russian court has fined a woman for her teenage daughter's participation in an unsanctioned anticorruption protest on March 26.

Yelena Makarova, an attorney for 17-year-old vocational high school student Sofia Murzina, told the Meduza news website on April 24 that her client was found guilty of violating a law on mass gatherings and for refusing to leave the unsanctioned rally.

The court in the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals said it imposed the 10,000 ruble ($177) fine against Murzina’s mother, Tatyana Lipovets, because Murzina does not have a permanent source of income.

The March 26 protests across Russia were the biggest antigovernment demonstrations in the country since a series of rallies that Aleksei Navalny helped lead in 2011 and 2012.

Thousands of teenagers took part in the March 26 protests.

Based on reporting by Meduza

A Russian man who was jailed following antigovernment protests held nationwide on March 26 has filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

In an interview published in the newspaper Kommersant on April 24, Agora human rights group chief Pavel Chikov said that Sochi resident Vitaly Nibiyeridze's lawsuit was the first complaint lodged with the ECHR in connection with the clampdown on protesters.

Police detained more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone over the anticorruption rallies organized by opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the biggest demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin's government since a wave of protests in 2011-12.

Nibiyeridze was detained while trying to organize a march in Sochi. He spent eight days in jail after a court found him guilty of holding an unsanctioned mass gathering.

His lawyer, Mikhail Benyash, said that Nibiyeridze's suit accuses the authorities in the Black Sea resort city of violating his freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, and his right to a fair trial.

Chikov said that hundreds of similar complaints will be filed with the ECHR in the near future.

With reporting by Kommersant and Ekho Moskvy