MOSCOW, May 8 (RAPSI) – The Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg has expunged videoblogger Ruslan Sokolovsky’s conviction of extremism, lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov has told RAPSI.

The court has released Sokolovsky, khown as Pokemon Catcher, from punishment for extremism due to the recent changes in legislation mitigating penalties for incitement of hatred and enmity, the lawyer has said.

As for other charges of offending the feelings of the believers and using a pen designed to surreptitious obtaining of information, Sokolovsky has served the most part of his sentence for these crimes by the time of the extremism decriminalization law, Cherkasov has added. A prosecutor has asked 6 years for Sokolovsky for these crimes, and the court has granted the motion. Thus, this conviction is also expired, according to the attorney.

On May 22, 2017, Sokolovsky was found guilty of inciting hatred, violation of religious rights and illegal possession of special technical means intended for obtaining secret information. On July 7, a court in Yekaterinburg on Friday reduced the young man’s suspended sentence from 3.5 to 2 years and 3 months.

The blogger insisted on innocence and claimed that said technical means, photo- and video-camera, mounted in the housing of a ballpoint pen, belonged to one Sergey Lazarev who lives in Ukraine. Russian authorities were not able to locate and interrogate Lazarev, his attorney Alexey Bushmakov told RAPSI earlier.

According to investigators, from May 2013 to September 2016, the defendant produced nine video files and placed them on the YouTube. These videos, according to a forensic examination, contain signs of incitement of hatred or hostility, humiliation of human dignity and a group of persons on the grounds of nationality, religion, as well as against members of a particular social group. Placement of these videos on the Internet was qualified by experts as public actions, expressing clear disrespect for society and committed to insult the religious feelings of believers.

In addition, Sokolovsky allegedly used unlawfully acquired special technical means. Investigators believe that he recorded videos through camera in the housing of a ballpoint pen. According to experts, the device corresponds to the category of special technical means intended for secret reception and registration of visual and acoustic information.

The case against Sokolovsky was launched after he had published video on Youtube channel, in which he played the mobile app of the popular Pokemon Go game in Orthodox Church-on-Blood in Yekaterinburg.

Pokemon Go, a videogame with elements of augmented reality for mobile devices, became incredibly popular all over the world.