Russian Quran Desecrator Charged with Treason
Nikita Zhuravel, who was jailed for 3.5 years in February for burning a Quran outside a mosque in the southern Russian city of Volgograd has had fresh charges pressed against him for treason, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Thursday.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Zhuravel, 20, contacted a member of the Security Service of Ukraine through an online messenger and “offered his cooperation” before proceeding to send videos of military aircraft, trains transporting military equipment, and movements of military vehicles to the individual in March 2023.
Under Russian law, the maximum punishment for treason is life imprisonment.
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Zhuravel was originally arrested in May 2023 after he posted a video of himself setting fire to a Quran outside a mosque in the southern Russian city of Volgograd. At the time, investigators claimed he had confessed to doing so “on the orders of the Ukrainian intelligence services” for a reward of 10,000 rubles (€100).
Shortly after his arrest, Zhuravel was transferred to a pretrial detention center in the Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya.
Source: novayagazeta.eu
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