A leader of the opposition was arrested Sunday in Moscow a few moments after his release from prison. He had just served a sentence related to his participation in the protest that has stirred for a month the Russian capital.
На выходе из спецприемника снова задержан бризами 2-го оперполка pic.twitter.com/zjTo1hHVLx
- Илья Яшин (@IlyaYashin) August 18, 2019"I was arrested again when I was released from the detention center," Ilia Iachine told her Twitter account. His message is accompanied by a video showing a policeman telling him that he was arrested for "calls for unauthorized actions on August 18 and 19", without specifying what actions he is talking about. "And here are the friends, it's like that," he continues in the recording, after climbing into a cell van.
A short sentence doubled
Arrested on 27 July before a big demonstration day, Ilia Iachine was sentenced, like other opposition figures, to a short term of imprisonment (ten days) for "calls for unauthorized demonstrations". Instead of being released on 8 August, he was taken to a court that day and sentenced to 10 days of additional detention for a demonstration on 14 July.
An electoral protest movement broke out in mid-July after officially rejecting registration of candidates for election to the Moscow Parliament, scheduled for 8 September, for formal flaws. Ilia Iachine is one of the excluded politicians. Since then, the protests have been firmly repressed by the police, which has totaled nearly 3,000 arrests. The main opponent of the Kremlin, anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, was also imprisoned.