Lawyers assess possibility of criminal prosecution for attack on their colleague in Rostov-on-Don

A lawyer from Rostov-on-Don is scared after an attack on her, and she intends to file a complaint to the police, her friends say. People with firearms came to the house where human rights defender Maxim Vedoprav lived earlier. He and his girlfriend made public the information about the violation of the rights of military personnel who refused to participate in combat operations.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that in Rostov-on-Don, an unidentified person hit the lawyer who provided legal assistance to military personnel who refused to participate in combat operations.

“She complained that she was very scared after the attack and complained about sleeping problems on the first night after the incident,” a source said.

He added that the lawyer and human rights defender Maxim Vedoprav found themselves in the spotlight of the militaries after an article posted by the “Astra” portal about a torture chamber arranged in an abandoned mine in Donetsk. According to sources of the “Astra” portal, refusers and guilty Russian military personnel are being tortured in the above-mentioned torture chamber. “The lawyer and the human rights defender helped the militaries who refused to fight and also helped write the above article posted by the ‘Astra’ portal,” the source said.

“Last night, after the above article was posted by the ‘Astra’ portal, <some people> with firearms tried to break into the house where I lived earlier ... They started to break down the door. An owner explained that I no longer lived there, and they left ... I moved the day before the events,” Maxim Vedoprav explained.

The human rights defender believes that the law enforcement bodies will not help him.

An attack on a lawyer can result in a sentence of up to 10 years of imprisonment if there is a threat to life, suggests a lawyer from the “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence*.

The attack on the lawyer has elements of crimes under several criminal articles, but the criminals will unlikely be found, since the law enforcement bodies are not interested in finding and punishing the attackers, the attacked lawyer’s colleagues believe.

*As reported on the website of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the reason for including on March 1, 2024, the unregistered “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence (CHRD) into the roster of foreign agents was the spread of “inaccurate information aimed at creating a negative image of the Russian Federation, as well as the Russian Armed Forces.”