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Defense for jailed opposition activist Dadin asks top court to release him from prison

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. The defense for jailed Russian opposition activist Ildar Dadin has asked Russia’s Supreme Court to repeal the verdict and release him from the penal colony, Dadin’s lawyer Kseniya Kostromina told TASS.

"Today we have filed a petition to Chairman of the Supreme Court of Russia Vyacheslav Lebedev requesting him to submit a representation to the Supreme Court Presidium on instituting review proceedings for repealing judgments on the case of my client Ildar Dadin. In the same petition, we are requesting to release Dadin from imprisonment," the lawyer said.

Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled on February 10 that the Dadin case would be reviewed while the Criminal Code’s article under which he was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison would be changed.

Article 212.1 introduced in the Russian Criminal Code in July 2014 stipulates criminal liability for repeated violations of the rules of public gatherings. Dadin is the first and by far the only one person convicted under this article.

In December 2015, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Dadin guilty on four counts of participating in unauthorized protests in Moscow. He was sentenced to three years in a penal colony but then the Moscow City Court reduced his jail term to two and a half years.

Dadin filed an appeal against the article under which he had been convicted with the Constitutional Court.