Press Release, 18.10.2022

Photo: Vasily Dikaryev and Andrei Morev / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Vasily Dikaryev is accused of reposting, in 2014, a person whose avatar featured one of the protagonists of Schindler’s List. Judge of the Tagansky District Court of Moscow returned to the police an administrative case against Vasily Dikaryev, a Moscow municipal deputy from the Yabloko party.

Dikaryev is accused of “demonstrating Nazi symbols” in a 2014 post on his VKontakte page. This is a photograph of American actor Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth, the commandant of the concentration camp from the film Schindler’s List.

The court’s ruling states that there is no information in the case file that Dikaryev’s photo was directly posted by Dikaryev on his page. Dikaryev reposted the message of another user, on whose avatar there was a photograph of Ralph Fiennes in a Nazi uniform. However, it is unclear when exactly this person put the image of Amon Göth on his avatar.

In addition, the police protocol does not indicate the place and time of the administrative offense, the court ruling says.

“All the aforementioned indicates a significant violation of the requirements of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, which does not allow us to properly consider the case of an administrative offense,” the Judge concluded.

The Judge decided to return the materials of the case against Dikaryev back to the Tagansky Police Station in order to eliminate the shortcomings.

Despite this decision of the court, Vasily Dikaryev was not released. The police took him back to the police station. Dikaryev spent the night of 17-18 October in the police station.  It should be noted that Dikaryev is a sole parent of his child.