Lawyers of the director of the Moscow-based Ukrainian library prepare to appeal against house arrest imposed on her in October 2015 and extended several times.
Natalya Sharina, who was arrested in autumn 2015, is still under house arrest without the right to leave her flat and use any forms of communication. Trial against the Russian citizen and former director of the Moscow-based Ukrainian literature library began on November 2, 2016. The woman is charged with extremism (distributing banned books).
Her lawyers filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights against the decision of Moscow’s Tagansky Court on house arrest for Sharina. They say the absence of walks has a negative effect on the defendant's health. Moreover, this type of pre-trial restrictions is unnecessary, as Natalya Sharina’s passport was seized by investigators and attached to her case. So, there’s no risk that she could flee Russia. The lawyers stress that Russian authorities failed to give a convincing justification that house arrest must be extended.
Natalya Sharina’s lawyers will challenge Russian authorities’ actions, who violated her rights under several articles of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
Natalya Sharina was arrested on October 30, 2015, after the library and her flat were raided. The initial charge was extremism, but later prosecutors also charged her with embezzlement. According to investigators, Sharina distributed books by Ukrainian nationalilst Dmytro Korchynsky among library users in 2011-2015, thus violating the anti-extremism law. In 2010, the library was raided two times in connection with the law. A criminal case was initiated, but it was closed a few months later. This time prosecutors accused Sharina of spending the money meant for salaries to library lawyers on her judicial defence. The trial began on November 2, 2016. House arrest has been extended until April 28, 2017, in accordance with the decision of Moscow's Meshchansky Court.
Members of the Russian PEN Centre filed a petition to Russia’s president, prosecutor general and Investigative Committee, calling to “stop the crackdown on the Ukrainian library”. They expressed indignation about the prosecution of Sharina and urged to immediately stop political repression against the library staff. Dozens of PEN Centre members signed the petition, including Svetlana Alexievich, Alexander Gelman, Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergey Parkhomenko, Lev Rubinshtein, Victor Shenderovich, Boris Vishnevsky, Alina Vitukhovskaya, Grigory Chkhartishvili and others.
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