A Moscow court has convicted the former editor of an ultranationalist newspaper of extremism and handed him a two-year suspended sentence, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday.
The Savyolovsky District Court convicted Yury Mukhin, 60, former editor of the Duel weekly, which had a national circulation of 11,000, of extremism for publishing calls to destroy Russia in an article in July 2006, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, Interfax reported. The article, titled “Death to Russia!” contained the words, “Russia is satanic … and it must be completely destroyed. In the name of God and the Russian Aryan Nation,” the statement said. The article was also posted on the newspaper’s web site, Duel.ru.
Linguistic experts with the Federal Security Service concluded that the article contained “calls” to “change the constitutional order by force,” “break Russia’s integrity,” “destroy the security” of the country and “incite ethnic and religious hatred,” Interfax said.
In May, the Moscow City Court upheld a ruling of a district court to declare Duel an extremist publication and shut it down because of another 2006 article that called on the readers to hold a referendum to change the Constitution, the newspaper’s web site said.
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