MOSCOW, August 26 (RAPSI) – The Moscow City Court on Thursday upheld sentence against a member of the New Greatness movement Pavel Rebrovsky for organization of an extremist community, the court’s press service told RAPSI.

However, the court included his house arrest term served from March 2018 to March 2019 in the punishment term.

In late October, Moscow’s Lyublinsky District Court convicted and sentenced Rebrovsky. Prosecutors asked to jail the defendant for 7 years.

In October 2019, his case was sent back to a lower court for reconsideration. The Moscow City Court therefore overturned a 2.5-year jail sentence passed on him. The first trial of Rebrovsky was held without examination of evidence and witness interrogation as the defendant had pleaded guilty. However, he failed to fulfill the plea deal conditions that led to the sentence vacation and retrial.

In August 2020, other New Greatness defendants Dmitry Poletayev, Maxim Roshchin, Maria Dubovik and Anna Pavlikova received 6, 6.5, 6 and 4 years of suspended sentence respectively. The movement’s leader Ruslan Kostylenkov was ordered to serve 7 years in penal colony; Vyacheslav Kryukov and Petr Karamzin were imprisoned for 6.5 and 6 years in jail respectively. The court found that had created the community for a violent upheaval.

Prosecutors earlier asked the court to sentence alleged leader of the extremist movement Kostylenkov to 7.5 years in penal colony; Karamzin and Kryukov to 6.5 and 6 years behind bars respectively. Suspended terms were demanded for other defendants.

The defendants were arrested in March 2018. Investigators stated that they followed far-right ideas and that their leader claimed that he planned to establish a new order in Russia.

The New Greatness case became a subject of public controversy because the defense has information that the movement itself was organized by a law enforcement officer.