Three teenage schoolboys from Siberia were sentenced by a Russian court after being accused of terrorism over the way they played a virtual reality computer game.
Nikita Uvarov, Denis Mikhailenko, and Bogdan Andreev were 14 years old in the summer of 2020, when they were arrested on charges of posting leaflets critical of the Russian government and supporting Azat Miftakhov, a graduate student from Moscow State University who was detained by authorities in February 2019.
After investigators seized the boys’ smartphones, they discovered a “bomb plot” within the game Minecraft, the popular video game in which the teens had built a virtual FSB state security office that they planned to blow up.
Uvarov was sentenced to five years in a penal colony, while Mikhailenko and Andreyev were handed three and four-year suspended sentences.
The Eastern Military Court in Krasnoyarsk found Uvarov, Mikhailenko and Andreyev guilty of “undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities” on Thursday.
Andreev, Mikhailenko and Uvarov, were all aged 14 at the time they were detained after putting up stickers in their hometown of Kansk in support of Miftakhov, a math student accused in Moscow—some 2,700 miles away—of throwing a smoke grenade into the offices of President Putin’s ruling party.
The video game, which has no fixed storyline, allows users to create and explore a virtual world.
Mikhailenko and Andreyev pleaded guilty to the charges and were later placed under house arrest.
Uvarov denied his guilt and was placed in a pre-trial detention center, where he claims to have been subjected to mental and physical pressure to confess his guilt.
As “evidence of terrorist activities” authorities say the teenagers posted criticism of the government in correspondence on the social media networks Vkontakte and Telegram, manufactured homemade firecrackers, played with fire in abandoned buildings, posted political leaflets, and plotted to blow up an FSB building in the Minecraft computer game.
The trio was originally accused of creating a computer game in which a building of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was supposed to be bombed and of plotting terrorist acts in Kansk “to retaliate” against the imprisonment of activists, including alleged members of the organization called Set (Network), which Russian authorities have labeled as terrorist.
A year ago, the Investigative Committee dropped most of the charges against the three Siberian teenagers, leaving a single charge against them — “going through training to conduct terrorist activities.” Russia’s Criminal Code envisions up to 20 years in prison for individuals found guilty of that crime.
Several people have been found guilty of being members of Network and handed lengthy prison terms in recent years on charges of taking part in the activities of a terrorist group that planned to overthrow the country’s authorities. Human rights organizations say the charges are fake, while some of the group’s members have claimed they were tortured while in custody.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Russian authorities have “redoubled their efforts” over the past year to repress online freedoms, citing the blocking of tools used to circumvent censorship, expanding “oppressive” Internet laws, and pressure on tech companies to comply with “increasingly stifling regulations.”
A court in Russia’s northwestern region of Novgorod fined 63-year-old retiree Nikolai Pylyaev for posting a photo on social media in 2012 that showed a man urinating on a poster, which depicted “a person who looked like” President Vladimir Putin, the latest example of Moscow’s harsh crackdown on dissent.