Prominent Russian lawyer Mark Feigin says he will appeal in court his disbarment for allegedly unethical behavior.
Feigin wrote on Facebook on April 25 that the decision by the Moscow Chamber of Attorneys a day earlier "cannot be accepted as lawful, grounded, or fair."
"Perhaps for the first time in the history of Russian advocacy, they're stripping someone of his profession for expressing his opinion on social networks," Feigin wrote.
According to Feigin, the chamber also ignored a provision in the code of lawyers' ethics stating that a lawyer cannot be sanctioned for a misdeed allegedly committed six months earlier.
"It is yet further evidence that the provisions regulating lawyers' behavior on the Internet are a tool for getting rid of undesirables: They are implemented selectively and are very well suited to the settling of personal scores and political persecution," Feigin said.
He also called on all lawyers in Russia to support him in his legal fight against the disbarment.
The Moscow Chamber of Attorneys' decision comes after lawyer Stalina Gurevich demanded that Feigin be deprived of his status for violating the norms of the lawyers' code of ethics by using obscene vocabulary on social media against his colleagues and their clients.
Feigin has gained prominence for representing the interests of the punk protest band Pussy Riot, Crimean Tatar activists who openly opposed Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and Nadia Savchenko, the Ukrainian airwoman who spent nearly two years in Russian captivity, in politically sensitive cases.
He is also defending Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, who is on trial in Moscow on espionage charges.
