The German director was arrested in Russia

A German citizen of Russian origin, political documentary film director Andrei Nekrasov is imprisoned in Russia while filming a new film. He was placed in a detention center for foreigners and his phone was taken. Deutsche Welle reported this on Thursday, September 5.

It is reported that director and writer Andrei Nekrasov was detained in the Smolensk region on August 24. A 66-year-old native of the Russian Federation, Nekrasov has only German citizenship. The German Foreign Ministry confirmed that a representative of the German Embassy in the Russian Federation has contacted him.

According to Nekrasov, he is shooting the film in the Smolensk region.

“The footage was supposed to be part of a research project about Russia,” explained the director.

Nekrasov said that he was detained by FSB officers in plain clothes, who said that he was filming near the building of this special service.

Additionally, according to Nekrasov, a Russian court convicted him of violating an administrative article on “illegal professional activity.” The director was sentenced to arrest in a center for holding foreigners for up to 90 days, despite the fact that the director, as he says, did not know that the FSB building was located near the location of the work of film and did not plan to film it.

A lawyer working with the “First Department” human rights project suggested that Article 18.10 of the Code of Administrative Offenses could be used against Nekrasov for illegally conducting labor activities in Russia. In this case, the maximum penalty is a fine and deportation.

“In this case, the court has the right to determine the arrest for up to 90 days – during this time the bailiffs must buy transport tickets and deport the offender with a ban on entering the Russian Federation for five year,” said the lawyer. .

At the same time, the lawyer admitted that in this case “the involvement of special services and the relatively severe punishment is shameful.”

As the director reported, the conditions of detention in the transit center are no different from those in prison: a hard bed, bars on the windows, almost no sunlight entering the cell, no walks because of the territorial adjustment. The director also complained that his phone was being taken.

According to open sources, Andrei Nekrasov is the author of the films “Distrust” about the bombings of residential buildings in Moscow in 1999, “Riot The Litvinenko Case” about the poisoning of a former FSB officer in London, “Russian Lessons” about. the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and “The Magnitsky Act – Behind the scenes about the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian pre-trial detention center.

In temporarily occupied Sevastopol, the city court convicted a local resident who allegedly collected and passed information to the SBU about the location of fortification barriers in Sevastopol Bay.

The Russian FSB announced the detention in Samara of a woman who allegedly cooperated with the Ukrainian special services and “encouraged the Russian military to go over to the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”