MOSCOW, April 25 (RAPSI) - A Moscow court sentenced Konstantin Lebedev to two and a half years in prison on Thursday for organizing mass riots on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration last May for a third presidential term.
Over 400 people were arrested and scores were injured in violent clashes on May 6 after protesters briefly broke through police lines in a bid to take their protest to the Kremlin walls.
The Moscow City Court said Lebedev helped to organize the riots which resulted in violence, arson and destruction of property. The other individuals involved in the case have not been named, but referred to as "the first accomplice," "the second accomplice," "an opposition movement leader," "an assistant to a State Duma member," and "unidentified persons."
The judge only mentioned by name Givi Targamadze, a Georgian politician who was alleged to have sponsored the riots. Lebedev managed the funds and assigned a monetary reward to himself and his accomplices, the court said. He also rented an aparment for covert meetings and bought an Audi A6 and an Opel for his conspirators, it said.
According to the verdict, Lebedev engaged as many participants as possible in the unauthorized rally in the hope the rally would become hostile. The crowd subsequently broke through a police cordon, clashed with police and used portable toilets as barricades.
Lebedev had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
The case was initiated after a controversial documentary film titled "Anatomy of Protest 2" was shown on state-owned NTV broadcast network. The film claimed that the opposition was organizing a coup using funds from abroad and apparently showed the Left Front movement's coordinator Udaltsov and his companions allegedly talking with Targamadze, who at the time headed Georgia's Parliamentary Defense and Security Committee, and, it alleged, was involved in planning the "color" revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as mass riots in Belarus.
In November, a Moscow court gave a four and a half-year prison sentence to Maxim Luzyanin, another demonstrator involved in the Bolotnaya riots, for “the use of violence against public officials.”
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