Communicated on 24 May 2019

THIRD SECTION

Application no. 42633/18
Aleksey Vladimirovich GLUKHOV
against Russia
lodged on 27 August 2018

STATEMENT OF FACTS

1.  The applicant, Mr Aleksey Vladimirovich Glukhov, is a Russian national, who was born in 1983 and lives in Novocheboksarsk. He is represented before the Court by Ms Irina Khrunova, a lawyer practising in Kazan.

2.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

3.  The applicant is an attorney. Since 2011 he has been counsel for Mr Dmitriy Semenov, an opposition politician in the Chuvashiya Republic. In 2016, he represented Mr Semenov in the administrative proceedings, in which he was charged with publishing “extremist materials” consisting of a single sentence “Orthodoxy or death” («Православие или смерть») printed on the t-shirt of a Russian MP Milonov (see Semenov v. Russia, no. 47810/17).

4.  On 16 November 2016 the applicant posted two updates on his Facebook newsfeed.

5.  The first update showed a photograph of the court decision in Mr Semenov’s case on which the applicant commented, “The first judgment in Dmitriy Semenov’s case. Not to mention Article 28.2 of the COA”. Article 28.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences governs the procedure for drawing up a report on an administrative offence.

6.  The second update linked to a newspaper article entitled “A Chuvash opposition politician on trial for publishing a photograph of Milonov” and gave the applicant’s comment, “Read this about today’s trial of Dmitriy Semenov under Article 20.29 of the COA. As the eminent expert on freedom of speech and internet Damir Gainutdinov says, holding someone liable for mere quoting [someone else’s speech] is not necessary in a democratic society. There was not even a quote [in this case]. For now, we asked [the court] to summon [FSB officers] with documents showing how they had come across a 2014 post in the course of [routine] monitoring, and to commission an expert to determine whether the offending phrase was present. The judge is deliberating, we are having a coffee break.”

7.  On the same day a user by the name “Angry Russian” commented on the second update with a question “Well but what about Milonov?” and a link to the YouTube video “Vitaliy Milonov – Orthodoxy or death!”

8.  On 30 April 2018 an officer of the