CHELYABINSK, Russia -- The prosecution has asked a court to sentence a couple, who are self-declared anarchists, to five years in prison each for criticizing the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, with a protest banner they unfurled at the agency's headquarters in 2018.
Pavel Chikov of the legal defense organization Agora wrote on Telegram on August 23 that the prosecutor at the high-profile trial asked the central district court of Chelyabinsk to sentence Dmitry Tsibukovsky and his wife, Anastasia Safonova, for placing a large banner with the words "FSB -- Main Terrorist” outside the security agency's headquarters in the city in 2018.
The prosecutor said the couple was guilty of "hooliganism motivated by political hatred."
Tsibukovsky and Safonova were initially arrested in 2018 after they placed the anti-FSB banner to express solidarity with a group of activists arrested in 2017-2018 for allegedly creating a terrorist group called Set (Network), with cells in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza, and Omsk, as well as in neighboring Belarus.
In September, the court sentenced Tsibukovsky to 2 1/2 years and Safonova to two years in prison for the same action, but a court of appeals quashed the sentences in November and sent the case back to investigators.
Before that, the case against Tsibukovsky and Safonova was thrown out twice after investigators failed to prove elements of a crime in the couple’s actions.
Tsibukovsky said earlier that he and Safonova were tortured while in custody.
