Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry has launched a criminal case against a 25-year-old man on charges of ‘publicly justifying terrorism’ over a comment he had made on Telegram in 2023.
The ministry’s press service announced the investigation on Monday.
They said that the 25-year-old man, whose name they did not disclose, is a resident of the rural settlement of Nesterovskoe, and that he had been placed under a travel ban.
According to the ministry, the basis for the prosecution was a comment published in a public Telegram group on 17 January 2023. The message, the Interior Ministry claimed, contained a reference to and a justification of the actions of a ‘participant’ of an unspecified international terrorist organisation. The ministry said the person the man had commented about was found guilty by the Southern Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. The authorities have not shared the comment over which the man was accused of justifying terrorism.
The ministry’s statement noted that the establishment of circumstances and the collection of evidence were carried out by officers of the 'E' centre of the republic’s Interior Ministry in cooperation with the Federal Security Service (FSB) division in Ingushetia, and that the criminal case was initiated by the Investigative Department of the regional FSB department. Further procedural actions are being handled by the relevant authorities, the official release said.
In January 2023, the Southern Military Court in Rostov-on-Don did indeed hand down sentences in the case of four residents of Ingushetia who were found guilty of being members of the Islamic State, and of planning attacks on security facilities in the republic. Sentences in those cases ranged from five to nine years, with federal and regional news outlets covering their trials.
The court found that the Ingush residents had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, planned several terrorist attacks, and had posted materials on social media that justified terrorist activity.
They were convicted under articles covering a variety of terrorism-related charges.
In June, a 24-year-old woman was detained in Ingushetia on suspicion of promoting and justifying terrorism. According to a local Telegram channel with close ties to law enforcement, the woman allegedly acted as an administrator of several Telegram channels used to disseminate pro-terrorist content.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the number of criminal cases related to the justification or promotion of terrorism has significantly increased. According to OVD-Info — an independent Russian human rights group — such cases are increasingly being based on social media activity, including posts on Telegram, YouTube, and VKontakte.
Elizaveta Chukharova
