Watchdog

CHELYABINSK, Russia -- A Russian court sentenced a couple of self-declared anarchists to 21 months in a colony settlement for criticizing the Federal Security Service (FSB) by unfurling a protest banner at the agency's headquarters in 2018.

A colony settlement is a dormitory-like penitentiary located near an industrial facility where convicts work alongside regular employees.

Pavel Chikov of the legal defense organization Agora wrote on Telegram that the central district court in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk sentenced Dmitry Tsibukovsky and Anastasia Safonova on September 19 after finding them guilty of "hooliganism motivated by political hatred."

Tsibukovsky said earlier that he and Safonova were tortured while in custody. Prosecutors had sought five years in prison for each defendant.

Tsibukovsky and Safonova were initially arrested in 2018 after they placed the anti-FSB banner to express solidarity with a group of activists arrested in 2017-18 for allegedly creating a terrorist group called Set (Network), with cells in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza, and Omsk, as well as in neighboring Belarus.

In September 2021, the court sentenced Tsibukovsky to two and a half years and Safonova to two years in prison for the same action, but a court of appeals quashed the sentences in November and sent the case back to investigators.

Before that, the case against Tsibukovsky and Safonova was thrown out twice after investigators failed to prove elements of a crime in the couple’s actions.