Prosecutors have asked a court in the city of Samara in Russia to sentence civil rights activist Karim Yamadayev from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan to six years and seven months in prison for mocking President Vladimir Putin and two of his close associates in a YouTube video.
Pavel Chikov, the chief of the Agora nongovernmental legal-aid organization, quoted Yamadayev's lawyer, Vladimir Krasikov, on February 24 as saying that the prosecutor had asked the court to find the defendant guilty of promoting terrorism and insulting authorities.
Yamadayev, a former police officer in Tatarstan, was arrested in January 2020 and charged over a video he posted in late 2019 on his YouTube channel.
The video in question features Yamadayev, dressed as a judge, reading death sentences to two men whose heads are covered with black sacks. A white sign hangs from their necks with the names "Dmitry Peskov" and "Igor Sechin."
Peskov is Putin’s long-serving press spokesman, while Sechin is the powerful chief of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft.
Another man in the video portrays a third defendant who also has his head covered with a black sack and a sign with the name "Vladimir Putin."
