MOSCOW --- Prosecutors are seeking correctional labor sentences for four former editors of the Doxa student magazine in Moscow for allegedly engaging minors in activities that might be "dangerous" because of a video they posted online questioning whether it was right for teachers to discourage students from attending rallies for opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
The request was made on April 1 at the trial in Moscow of Armen Aramyan, Natalya Tyshkevich, Alla Gutnikova, and Vladimir Metyolkin.
The prosecutor wants the four to be handed two years of correctional labor each, while also barring them from being administrators of websites over the same period.
According to Russian legislation, those handed correctional labor sentences must pay the State Treasury a portion of their wages if they are already employed. If they are unemployed, they must work at jobs assigned by the Federal Penitentiary Service during the term of their sentence.
The four journalists were detained in mid-April 2021 for questioning at the Investigation Committee after their homes and the magazine's offices were searched over the video, which the publication posted online in January 2021.
The video questioned teachers' motives as to why they warned students about repercussions they could face for participating in unsanctioned rallies on January 23 and January 31, 2021, in protest at Navalny's arrest.
Doxa editors say the video was deleted from the magazine's website following a demand from Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove it.
More than 10,000 supporters of Navalny were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies. Many of those detained were either fined or handed several-day jail terms. At least 90 were charged with criminal offenses and several have been fired by their employers.
Human rights groups have called on Moscow repeatedly to stop targeting journalists because they are covering the protests or express solidarity with protesters, since both are protected under the right to freedom of expression.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17, 2021, upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning in Siberia in August 2020 that several European laboratories concluded was from a military-grade chemical nerve agent.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely regarded as politically motivated.
Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given the amount of time he had been held in detention.
Last week, a court sentenced Navalny to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of embezzlement and contempt charges in a separate case that Navalny and his supporters also rejected as politically motivated.
