By Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States issued sanctions against a Russian judge on Tuesday for her role in the detention of human-rights activist Alexei Gorinov over his opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Treasury Department said.
Treasury said the judge, Olesya Mendeleeva, ordered the “ongoing arbitrary detention” of Gorinov and sentenced him to seven years in prison in July 2022 for speaking against the war.
Gorinov, a former district councillor in Moscow, was the first man to be jailed under Russia’s war censorship laws.
He was convicted in 2022 of spreading false information about the Russian army after telling a council meeting that children in Ukraine were “dying every day” as a result of Moscow’s invasion.
“Known for handing down long and harsh sentences, Mendeleeva convicted Gorinov for knowingly disseminating false information about the Russian military, becoming the first judge in Russia to find a defendant guilty … for such a charge,” the Treasury said in a statement.
Gorinov proposed a moment of silence for victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine during a March 15, 2022 district council meeting, Treasury said. He called it a “war” rather than “a special operation,” and discussed the deaths of Ukrainian children, it said.
Gorinov has suffered physical abuse and been denied medical treatment, the department said.
In November, Gorinov was sentenced to three more years in a penal colony. He was found guilty on new charges of “justifying terrorism” after being accused of promoting terrorism in conversations with other prisoners.
“Russia’s manipulation of its legal system silences dissent and suffocates the truth about Russia’s indefensible war against Ukraine,” said Bradley Smith, acting Treasury undersecretary.
Gorinov, 63, who is in poor health, is one of the most prominent jailed dissidents still inside Russia following an East-West prisoner swap in August that saw the release of others including opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and human-rights activist Oleg Orlov.
Public protest against the war is rare in Russia, which has cracked down on opposition to the Kremlin’s policies.
The Kremlin does not comment on individual cases, but says Russia’s courts are upholding the law against people engaged in subversive activity at a time of war.
Like dissident Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly in a penal colony in February, Gorinov has had one sentence stacked on top of another based on a crime allegedly committed while already in prison.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rod Nickel)
