10 Jan 2020 13:59

Uzbek man given 5.5 years in prison for promoting terrorism - Russian Prosecutor General's Office

MOSCOW. Jan 10 (Interfax) - A Moscow court has sentenced a citizen of Uzbekistan to five years and six months in prison for promoting terrorism, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said in a statement on Friday.

"The Second Western District Military Court convicted citizen of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shermuhammad Shamsiddinov, 24, of publicly calling for terrorist activities, publicly justifying terrorism, and promoting terrorism using the Internet (Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code)," the statement said.

According to investigators, from 2016 to 2018 Shamsiddinov "intentionally posted audio and video files on his personal page on a social network which justified terrorist organizations' activities, advertised the ideology of violence, justified the need to stage terrorist acts during such work, and also called on all Internet users to join terrorist organizations."

The indictment in this case was supported by a group of state prosecutors from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, including the Russian capital's Chief Prosecutor Denis Popov, the statement said.

Taking the state prosecutor's stance into account, the court sentenced Shamsiddinov to five years and six months in a standard-security penitentiary, banning him from creating and managing websites on electronic networks, including the Internet, for three years.