MOSCOW, April 28 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova) – The Moscow District Military Court has found imam Makhmud Velitov guilty of justifying terrorism and sentenced him to three years in a penal colony, RAPSI learnt in the court on Friday.

Earlier, a prosecutor demanded a 3.5-year prison term for the imam.

Investigators have reclassified charges against Velitov from “public justifying terrorism with the use of mass media” to “public calls to terrorist activity or justifying terrorism.” His house arrest has been therefore replaced with travel restrictions, lawyer Dagir Khasavov said earlier.

On September 23, 2013, Velitov, being a council chair and imam of a religious organization, made a public speech justifying activity of one of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami terrorist organization’s members during a prayer in a Moscow mosque, according to the Investigative Committee. This organization has been banned by Russia’s Supreme Court.

According to the forensic examination, the imam’s speech contained a set of psychological and linguistic features of justifying terrorist activities. Defense insisted that Velitov had performed a religious ritual allowed by canons of Islam regarding a deceased Muslim.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Islamic Liberation), founded in Jerusalem in 1953, is banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries. Russia's Supreme Court banned the group from operating on the territory of the country in 2003, describing it as a terrorist organization.

Hizb ut-Tahrir members are regularly arrested by the police across Russia, mainly in big cities in central Russia, the Volga region and Siberia. Also, there are many supporters in Crimea, which rejoined Russia in the spring of 2014.