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cali

(114,904 posts)
Wed Feb 12, 2014, 11:52 AM Feb 2014

The real heroes of Sochi are the evironmental activists who are getting jailed left and right

Here's the latest:

— An activist who shed the light on the environmental impact of Olympic construction in Sochi was ordered Wednesday to serve three years in prison for spray-painting a fence.

A court in the regional capital of Krasnodar converted the suspended sentence given to Yevgeny Vitishko in 2012 into a prison term, according to his lawyer, Alexander Popkov.

"We expected it and so did Zhenya (Vitishko)," Popkov told The Associated Press, adding that the ruling confirms suspicions that Vitishko is "persecuted for his activities."

Vitishko and another activist, Suren Gazaryan, were found guilty in 2012 of "deliberate destruction of property" for spray-painting the fence of what they said was a local governor's property in a national forest where construction is forbidden. Both received a suspended sentence, but Gazaryan was later threated with additional charges and promptly left the country. He received political asylum in Estonia last year.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/02/12/3261072/sochi-activists-sent-to-prison.html#storylink=cpy

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