He was convicted of "training for terrorist activities".
A Russian teenager has been sentenced to five years in prison over a terrorist plot to blow up a government building… in the video game Minecraft.
16-year-old Nikita Uvarov will spend the next half decade in a penal colony, after a Siberian military court found him guilty of “training for terrorist activities,” The Guardian reported.
Uvarov was arrested in the summer of 2020 — then aged 14 — along with two other teens for spreading leaflets in support of Azat Miftakhov, a mathematician and political activist who was also in custody on terrorism charges.
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One of the leaflets was posted on the local Federal Security Service (FSB) building, the agency that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB.
When agents arrested them and confiscated their phones, they said they found proof the trio were planning to blow up an FSB building, albeit not a real one, but a replica they were going to virtually construct in the popular building game Minecraft.
They also claimed the teens had been learning to make real explosives, and had been practicing detonations in abandoned buildings.
According to the outlet, the three initially faced a more serious charge of “participating in a terrorist organization”, but those charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
After the hearing, which was held behind closed doors, two of the teens were given suspended sentences for illegal weapons possession, after cooperating with authorities.
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But Uvarov pled not guilty, insisting he never planned to blow anything up.
He told the court if he was given prison time, he would serve it “with a clear conscience and dignity.”
“For the last time in this court I want to say: I am not a terrorist,” he declared.
Prosecutors had pushed for a nine year sentence. He was given five.
“It was painful for me to see how my country oppresses people, civil rights activists, who want the best for the country and stand for its well-being,” he said in his final statement, per Radio Free Europe. “Now, unfortunately, I am experiencing myself the despotism of the unfair collaborators of the system.”
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