Russian authorities have opened a new criminal case against political prisoner Richard Rose, accusing him of justifying terrorism (Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) and rehabilitating Nazism (Part 1 of Article 354.1), Rose said in a letter from his penal colony, excerpts of which were published by his support group.
According to Rose, investigators allege he made positive statements about the Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) and about the Russian Liberation Army, a Nazi-collaborator force commonly known as Vlasovites. “It’s absurd, I can’t stand ISIS. And the stuff about the Vlasovites is just a stretch. I don’t even know who exactly I supposedly justified or how. They cobbled together a fake, and I became guilty,” Rose wrote.
Rose’s wife, Maria Rose, told the outlet 7x7 that she believes the new case is linked to her husband’s conversations with cellmates, the content of his letters, and one of the essays he wrote in the colony. She specified that the charges include terrorism justification, which carries a sentence of five to seven years, and Nazi rehabilitation, punishable by up to three years.
Richard Rose, a photographer and activist originally from Kirov, was sentenced in 2023 by the Central District Military Court in Yekaterinburg to eight years in a penal colony for spreading “fakes” about the Russian army (under paragraph ‘d’ of Part 2 of Article 207.3) and justifying terrorism (Part 2 of Article 205). The case stemmed from his social media posts: a repost of a video about the killing of civilians in Bucha and a comment that read, “There is only one way to stop Putler — kill him physically.”
During his arrest in April 2022, Rose said FSB officers beat him. He filed a complaint, but it was not attached to the case. Rose gave a confession after investigators threatened to arrest his wife, send his son to an orphanage, and create unbearable conditions in the pretrial detention center.
Maria Rose, also facing criminal charges for “fakes” and calls for extremism, left Russia with their son. In January 2024, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Kirov sentenced her in absentia to five and a half years in a general-regime penal colony.