LONDON (Reuters) – A Siberian court sentenced a local man to 25 years in prison on Monday for a series of crimes including treason and attempted arson at a military recruitment office, a Russian lawyers’ association said.
Prosecutors at a military court in Novosibirsk accused Ilya Baburin of trying to set fire to the enlistment office with a Molotov cocktail at the request of an unidentified person from Ukraine.
The court also found him guilty of setting fire to a local music school, which was classified as a terrorist act.
Baburin, identified in Russian independent media as an IT specialist, is 24 years old.
The legal association Pervy Otdel (First Department) quoted its lawyer as saying there was no evidence of Baburin’s involvement in the incidents, in which no casualties were reported.
“No, he did not kill, rape or rob anyone. Even according to the accusation, no one was harmed by his actions,” he quoted Zona Solidarnosti (Solidarity Zone), a Telegram channel that provides information about Russian anti-war activists. lawyer Vasily Dubkov said.
“Does a person really deserve to spend half his life in a prison or colony for such crimes?”
More than 20,000 people have been detained in Russia for their anti-war stance since Moscow’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, according to Russian rights group OVD-Info. Around 900 people were charged with crimes.
In his final address to the court last week, before sentencing, Baburin denied any guilt.
He read lines from a Russian adaptation of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy “Lysistrata” about the Peloponnesian War.
“You shouldn’t be indebted to this terrible homeland!”, quoted Baburin, according to a transcript published by Zona Solidarnosti.
“For your children will hardly understand / What these lofty ideas are, / Why and for what purpose have you waged wars / And left your own children orphans?”
(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Mark Trevelyan)
