Software developer and mathematics lecturer Dmitry Bogatov, was arrested in Moscow last April charged with "preparing to organize mass disorder" and making "public calls for terrorist activity". Bogatov was accused of posting a series of inflammatory and provocative posts to sysadmins.ru, a Russian speaking messaging board, calling for civil unrest during an anti-corruption demonstration that was due to be held in Moscow on 04/2/2017, a few days before his arrest.
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One of the posts he was accused of writing encouraged protestors to bring "rags, bottles, gas, turpentine, styrofoam, and acetone" to the demonstration. Another was a link to a music video by Kanye West, called No Church in the Wild, which displays fictional violence toward the police.
The IP address of Airat Bashirov, the anonymous user that posted the comments, was eventually tracked back to Bogatovs home address where he was subsequently arrested on terrorism charges. He was held in prison until 07/24/217 where he was then placed under house arrest whilst he waited for his trial to begin.
According to a website dedicated to Bogatovs release, Airat Bashirov continued to post comments to sysadmin.ru even after Bogatov was arrested. They also go on to confirm that during the time the posts in question had been posted Bogatov wasn't even at home. This was eventually proved by CCTV footage of him shopping at a grocery store.
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Not only was he a Tor operator, but he was also an open source developer working on the Debian platform. At the time of his arrest, Debian put out a statement condemning the arrest of one of it volunteers. Here's their statement below.
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Although the charges have now been dropped, this is still a worrying case for other tor node operators. It seems unbelievable that the Russian cyber security police were unaware of how a Tor relay works. Lets hope this was a moment of incompetence and not a new form of censorship or scare tactics being used by Russian authorities.
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