Voronezh court orders confiscation of a deleted VK image with an LGBT flag

Voronezh court orders confiscation of a deleted VK image with an LGBT flag

In Voronezh, a court, as part of an administrative case over LGBT “propaganda” on the internet, ordered the confiscation of an image deleted from VKontakte. The corresponding ruling was found by “Verstka” in the court records.

According to the document, police officers found an image with an LGBT flag in February of this year on the page of local resident Vsevolod Azovsky. A protocol was drawn up against the man for displaying “extremist symbols.”

At the hearing, Azovsky did not admit guilt and demanded that the case be dropped. According to his defenders, the police drew up the protocol “based on incompletely presented materials,” and “the flag shown on his page differs from the LGBT flag.”

Despite the defense’s arguments, the judge found the man guilty of the offense and fined him 1,500 rubles, with “confiscation of the предмет of the administrative offense, namely materials publicly displaying LGBT, on the ‘Internet.’”

At the same time, the image itself had been deleted from VKontakte two months before the case was heard. The ruling does not specify how exactly the court intended to confiscate a deleted image. Earlier, lawyers said that they did not understand the essence of the sanction involving confiscation of an image published on the internet.

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