22:57, 13 March 2025

Court fines journalist Nadezhda Kevorkova

Nadezhda Kevorkova in handcuffs is lead to a courtroom. Screenshot of a video posted by the RusNews on March 12, 2025, https://t.me/rusnews/68047

A Moscow court has found journalist Nadezhda Kevorkova guilty of justifying terrorism and sentenced her to a fine of 600,000 roubles.

On March 10, Kevorkova refused to admit guilt of justifying terrorism in court. Her relatives and colleagues, questioned as witnesses, described her as a peace-loving and sympathetic person. The prosecutor demanded to sentence the journalist to six years in prison and a fine. In her final statement, Kevorkova emphasized that Orkhan Djemal, whose publication reposting she is accused of, considered the mutiny in Nalchik a mistake, and the risks for journalists in Russia have increased significantly in recent years.

The charges were based on Nadezhda’s repost of a 2010 text by the journalist Orkhan Djemal about the attack on Nalchik and a publication about the Taliban movement*. In his article, Djemal talked about his acquaintance with Anzor Astemirov and the government's mistakes that led to discontent among Muslims.

The Djemal's text was not found to be illegal, and the defence earlier stated that the arguments that the publication in Kevorkova's Telegram channel was accessible to a wide audience were not true. Kevorkova's publications about the events in Nalchik concerned the torture to which detainees were subjected and irritated law enforcers, but she "didn’t support terrorism in any form," Maxim Shevchenko, a journalist and Nadezhda‘s ex-husband, is sure.

*By the Russian Supreme Court the movement has been recognized to be a terrorist organization and banned in Russia.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 12, 2025 at 05:50 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Source: СK correspondent