More than a dozen people in Moscow have been detained after protesting outside the Federal Security Service headquarters on Friday.
Authorities detained around 17 people, including journalists, who were demonstrating against the criminal charges faced by Russian journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva.
On Friday prosecutors demanded she receives a six-year prison sentence for allegedly justifying terrorism in a case that has drawn outrage from supporters and rights groups.
Prokopyeva wrote an article on the explosion outside a branch of Russia’s main intelligence agency in Arkhangelsk in 2018.
Russian authorities identified the attacker as a local 17-year-old boy and treated the attack as an act of terrorism.
In her opinion piece, Prokopyeva linked the attacker’s motives with the political climate in the country.
After the publication, the journalist was accused of publicly justifying terrorism.
The court is expected to announce the verdict on Monday.
The protesters fear that Prokopyeva’s case could trigger more repressions in the country, as people are unable to protest legally due to coronavirus restrictions.
“Hereafter the society will be decaying, and the repression will strengthen until people start expressing their anger. I don’t know how far it (the repressions) can go.”
“We have the example of North Korea. I doubt anyone wants to have the same here,” one of the protesters, Alexander Matskevich, said.