Spanish
A citizen of the Urals was fined 3,000 rubles (about $40) for searching for content that Russia considers extremist, Russian media reported this Wednesday.
A 20-year-old resident of the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals, named Sergei Glukhikh, was fined 3,000 rubles for searching on Google about the Ukrainian Azov battalion, in the first known case of its kind.
According to the investigators, on September 24, specifying the exact time and place of the incident, the young man was traveling on a bus and searched the internet about the battalion, considered extremist in Russia.
You can also read: Machado is present in Oslo because "he embodies an entire people", according to former President Duque
According to the independent portal Mediazona, the young man was arrested that same day, confessed his guilt and gave access to his phone. The police said they received an anonymous complaint, although official documents indicate that agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs. During the trial, FSB agents refused to testify how they found out that Glujij searched for extremist material on the internet, but they acknowledged that he had been under surveillance by law enforcement for some time, although Russian law prohibits this type of monitoring in non-criminal cases. According to a Daily Storm publication, an FSB agent traveled on the same bus as the young man. The defendant's lawyer insisted that law enforcement failed to prove that Glujij intentionally sought the material. He explained that if one searched for 'Azov' on the internet, all kinds of images could appear, including the Sea of Azov and the Ukrainian battalion, and he opined that perhaps after hearing it on television, the young man looked it up to find out what it was.
