10:53, 11 July 2025

Melkonyants transferred to Komi

Grigory Melkonyants in the courtroom. April 16, 2025. Photo by a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent

Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the Golos* movement, has been transferred from a pretrial detention center to a republic in northern Russia before the verdict comes into force.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, on July 4 it became known that Grigory Melkonyants was transferred to an unknown location. Melkonyants was taken from the pretrial detention center before the appellate court considered his appeal against the verdict, his lawyer Mikhail Biryukov indicated.

On May 14, the Basmanny Court of Moscow sentenced Grigory Melkonyants to five years in a general regime penal colony. On June 3, the defense's appeal was received by the Moscow City Court. Melkonyants was charged with cooperation with the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO)**. He did not admit guilt. The Golos* movement is not associated with ENEMO, and the Golos* Association of the same name, which was a member of ENEMO, was liquidated by the court in 2020, a year before ENEMO was declared an undesirable organization, Melkonyants' associates said earlier.

Grigory Melkonyants was transferred to the Komi Republic. This became known from the Federal Penitentiary Service's response to a letter addressed to the convict in the pretrial detention center, the human rights project OVD-Info* reported today on its Telegram channel.

According to the case card on the Moscow City Court website, Melkonyants' case is in the appeal stage of the verdict. The appeal hearing has not yet taken place, its date is not indicated in the card.

We recall that after Melkonyants' sentence, the "Voice" movement* announced its self-dissolution due to the threat of criminal prosecution for any form of participation in its work, and the termination of all projects, including the "Map of Election Violations". In Russia, there are no more opportunities for independent observation of voting in elections, political scientist Sergei Boyko stated.

In his final statement, Melkonyants called the time of his imprisonment "an exciting stage" of his life. "Here, in prison, I have met many people whom I probably would never have met in ordinary life - people with different life experiences, different levels of education and convicted under a variety of articles. And every day we have to agree on how to live together: how to organize duty in the cell, whether to ventilate it or not, where to get a refrigerator or a kettle. In fact, we constantly hold small referendums and reach an agreement," he said. "Caucasian Knot" published the full text of the final statement by Grigory Melkonyants, recorded by a correspondent in the courtroom on May 12, 2025.

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/412964