Andrei Barabanov

Andrei Barabanov was an ordinary participant of the event on 6 May 2012 on Bolotnaya Square, he was not engaged in political or public activities. During the dispersal of the event, he was severely beaten and detained, accused of disobeying a police officer. Barabanov was sentenced to one day of administrative arrest. At the end of the same month he was arrested in a criminal case. He was accused of kicking the body armour of riot policeman Ivan Kruglov (the investigation also claimed that Barabanov bit the shoe of policeman Andrei Goryshin). Barabanov pleaded guilty to using violence against Kruglov and apologised to him, but insisted that he had not harmed him and had no such intention, while the defence stresses that Barabanov's actions should be assessed in the light of the circumstances - the police attack on peaceful citizens. Kruglov himself did not identify Barabanov. There is no evidence that Barabanov's blow caused harm to Kruglov. In addition, one of the police witnesses said that Barabanov did not hit Kruglov, but his colleague Markov, but Markov was not questioned during the trial. The investigation also claimed that Barabanov was involved in breaking the OMON chain, although Barabanov and his common-law wife Ekaterina Minsharapova were in a completely different place, near the stage, at the time of the breakthrough. The prosecution urged the court in its arguments to disregard Minsharapova's testimony because she attended the trial as a spectator before testifying as a witness. Meanwhile, Minsharapova, unlike other relatives of the accused, did not attend the sessions before appearing in court as a witness. Soon after his arrest, Barabanov, who disagreed with the measure of restraint, went on a dry hunger strike, as a result of which he ended up in hospital. Later in the pre-trial detention centre, he accidentally bumped his eye on a sharp corner and was treated by an ophthalmologist.The prosecutors in the debate asked to sentence Barabanov to five and a half years' imprisonment in a general regime colony. The defence insists on his innocence. The Zamoskvoretsky court sentenced him to three years and seven months of imprisonment in a general regime colony, the Moscow City Court left the sentence unchanged. On 25 December 2015, he was released from prison.