A municipal court in the Russian city of Novocheboksarsk has fined a man 1,000 rubles ($18) for posting on social media information that a previous accusation against him of posting "extremist" information had been annulled.
Aleksei Glukhov, a lawyer for defendant Dmitry Pankov, posted on Facebook on March 28 that his client had been found guilty of distributing extremist material for posting an article about the dismissal of the first case against him.
The first case began in 2013 when Pankov posted on VKontakte a photograph of then-St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov wearing a shirt with an Orthodox slogan that has been ruled extremist.
Milonov has since been elected a deputy in the State Duma from the ruling United Russia party.
That case was dismissed after the court ruled there was no evidence a crime had been committed.
Earlier this month, a court in Cheboksary convicted opposition politician Dmitry Semyonov of distributing extremist materials for posting an article about his conviction for posting a photograph of Milonov with the same Orthodox slogan. Semyonov was fined 3,000 rubles ($54).
