Moscow (AFP)

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a blogger to five years in prison for a tweet in which he suggested attacking the children of the police after the severely suppressed opposition protests in Moscow.

"The court found Vladislav Sinitsa guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison," said the judge who sentenced him for "incitement to hatred" of police under a criticized law aimed at combating "extremism".

According to the Investigation Committee, the blogger posted a tweet on July 31 under the pseudonym "Max Steklov" in which he called "a large number of people to illegal acts of a violent nature towards the children of the police" . He had been detained on 5 August.

The tweet in question, according to the Dojd opposition channel, called for "studying the geolocation" of police family photos on the internet. "Then, one day, the child of the valiant defender of the order does not come back from school and instead, we receive in the mail a CD with a video + snuff movie + on it".

A "snuff movie" contains images of murder or extreme violence, possibly real, on people.

The young blogger, from the Moscow region, described his remarks as "a little violent and unethical" but denied calling for real acts. He claimed that they were taken out of context.

- "Unprecedented Severity" -

"I consider this decision an unprecedented severity," responded his lawyer, Denis Tikhonov, with AFP. He stated that his client will appeal and file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

This message reacted to the police crackdown on demonstrations that took place almost every weekend in Moscow since mid-July to protest against the ousting of opposition candidates for the election of the Moscow Parliament, scheduled for September 8th.

This protest movement, the largest since Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012, has resulted in nearly 2,700 arrests and the opening of several trials for "massive unrest" and "violence against order. " Most opposition leaders have short sentences for their calls to protest.

The main opponent of the Kremlin Alexei Navalny described the tweet in question as "stupid" but pointed out that he received similar messages targeting him "30 times a day".

"But they condemned Sinitsa for a stupid tweet at FIVE YEARS OF PRISON.Our government is cannibalistic and idiotic," he said on Twitter.

In recent years, the Russian judiciary has made dozens of convictions based on laws aimed at fighting extremism for what many consider to be harmless jokes on the internet.

Opposition campaigners denounced the Kremlin's deliberate will to force the Russians to think twice before posting their opinion on social networks, one of the last areas where the authorities' criticism is in general not severely repressed.

According to the independent organization Agora, about 20 people were sentenced for internet publications in Russia in 2018, and 43 the year before.

© 2019 AFP