On August 4, the Moscow Khimki Court announced the guilty verdict in the case of American Brittney Griner. A well-known basketball player was sentenced in the Russian Federation to 9 years in a penal colony for possession and smuggling of drugs and must pay a fine of one million rubles. Greiner’s vape cartridges contained 0.702 grams of hash oil, which is considered a significant amount under Russian law. Many in Russia and the West see the case as politically motivated and the verdict as overly harsh. This is not surprising if you look at what other crimes in Russia face this punishment. DW has gathered some examples.

Torture and sexual abuse of a minor

Two years ago, in July 2020, police detained 17-year-old Igor in the center of Ulan-Ude. They suspected theft, although he tried to get in through the window of a friend’s apartment, to which there was no key. After a harsh handshake detention, the teenager was placed in a service car and taken to the police station.

In the department, the police tried to force a confession from Igor. After vain attempts to persuade the teenager, the three men began to brutally mock him. The victim’s mother later told reporters that as a result of the violence with a plastic bottle, the teenager was diagnosed with ruptured and cracked rectum. In addition, he was hung with handcuffs behind his back so that his feet would not touch the ground – the so-called “swallow” torture. The officers were found guilty of sexual assault. Two employees received 9 and 9.5 years of seclusion in a strict regime colony, the third received 5.5 years in a general regime colony.

neo-nazi murders

Petersburg neo-Nazi Andrei Linok (known as Lincoln-88) in May 2011 received, like Brittney Greiner, 9 years in a penal colony. It is true that the prosecution’s plot was significantly different from what was presented to the American. A supporter of ideas of the superiority of the white race has drawn more than two dozen people into his criminal group to commit crimes against people from the Caucasus, Asia, Africa and Russia, Fontanka wrote.

In addition to Linok, young people from his group between the ages of 17 and 23 appeared before the court. They were charged under articles on attempted murder, murder motivated by national hatred, incitement to hatred and national enmity, as well as robberies. The state prosecutor asked them for two to eight years in prison.

domestic murder

The junior inspector of correctional colony No. 52 in the Sverdlovsk region, Tatyana Levina, killed her boss and part-time brother-in-law in 2015. The victim was her husband’s twin brother, but the brothers were ill and did not communicate. Levina, on duty, was forced to keep in touch with her husband’s relative.

One day, as the media wrote, the junior inspector once again quarreled with his boss and shot him with a Kalashnikov rifle. At trial, it was discovered that the woman staged self-defense. “The intruder, seeing that the victim continues to show signs of life, reloaded the machine gun and fired 19 more shots,” investigators said, according to the media. The court found Tatyana Levina guilty of murder and sentenced her to 9 years in prison in a penal colony.