MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/: The Moscow City Court has changed the pre-trial restriction for actor Pavel Ustinov, who was previously charged with attacking a riot policeman during the August 3 unauthorized rally in Moscow, TASS reported from the courtroom.
"The court has satisfied the prosecutors’ motion and changed the pre-trial restriction for Ustinov to recognizance not to leave. The circumstances which served as the basis for choosing the pre-trial restriction in the form of custody have changed," the judge read out the ruling, highlighting that the verdict was announced and the defendant cannot influence the process participants.
Ustinov attended the court session from the pre-trial detention center via video conference. The prosecutors earlier appealed Ustinov’s pre-trial restriction at the request of the defendant's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.
On September 23, the Moscow City Court will study the lawyer’s appeal against the first instance court’s ruling after a preliminary hearing for Ustinov, which prolonged his pre-trial restriction in the form of arrest. The appeal against the verdict will be studied on September 26. Apart from the lawyer, the Prosecutor General’s Office also appealed the verdict. The supervisory authority does not dispute the proof of Ustinov’s guilt and the accuracy of the qualification of his actions, assuming that the verdict is liable to changes in light of the injustice of the punishment due to its extreme severity. The Prosecutor General’s Office asked to impose a verdict that would not include detention.
On September 16, Moscow’s Tverskoi Court sentenced Ustinov to three and a half years in jail, recognizing him guilty of using violence against a riot policeman, causing harm to the latter's health (Part 2 Section 318 of the Russian Criminal Code). The investigators and the court made the conclusion that during the detention Ustinov offered active resistance to an officer of the Federal National Guard Troops Service, dislocating his shoulder. Ustinov pled not guilty, saying that he did not inflict any harm to the riot policeman and found himself at the August 3 rally by chance.
Konstantin Raikin, who had headed the theater class in which Ustinov studied; actors Alexander Pal, Maxim Vitorgan and Nikita Yefremov; TV presenter Maxim Galkin and others earlier spoke in Ustinov’s support. Appeals to the court over Ustinov’s case were under Russian Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova’s special control. Before the session in the Moscow City Court, she told TASS that, in her opinion, Ustinov’s custody is groundless.
