It was one of the harshest sentences meted out to anyone for an Internet-related offense, but not the only one. WATCH: Life Inside Moscow's Notorious Butyrka Prison The judge gave him a stiffer sentence than requested by prosecutors, who were seeking two years. Panarin was convicted on May 29, 2015, by the Moscow District Military Court for "justifying terrorism" and sentenced to three years in prison. Panarin is a member of the unregistered Other Russia party, formed by firebrand Russian writer and politician Eduard Limonov in 2010 after his National Bolshevik Party was outlawed. Panarin's arrest in his hometown of Barnaul on the banks of the Ob River was the first of many similar cases in Altai Krai, in what activists described as a crackdown. I can only image how much time was wasted to search through my account and all the postings to find something criminal," Panarin explained to RFE/RL. "As it turned out, a 'bad' post had been discovered that dated from two years earlier, from 2012. Panarin, who recently walked free from a prison in Biysk in southern Siberia's Altai Krai, says his troubles began on August 14, 2014, when he got a visit from authorities interested in one of his postings on the Russian social media network VKontakte. In Panarin’s case, however, the charges were ultimately ratcheted up to an even tougher charge: "supporting or justifying" terrorism, under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code. Panarin was among the first of hundreds to be charged for using the Internet to spread or incite "hatred." As criticism and a backlog of cases mounted, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently made a rare climbdown, softening the punishment for some Internet hate crimes. But one day they came to me because of one click of the mouse, which was viewed at best by a dozen people, plus security officials," Panarin told the Siberia Desk of RFE/RL's Russian Service. "I was working in a peaceful profession - architecture. In one of his first interviews since being released, Panarin, a political activist, says that his case left him convinced literally anyone "can land behind bars" in Russia today. He also rubbed shoulders with prisoners who he says did openly admit to using the Internet to distribute materials in support of terrorism. He served his full sentence at a prison in Siberia, where convicts and staff alike were awestruck that he had been imprisoned for, as he puts it, "clicking a computer mouse." Panarin says prison staff treated him "gently," giving him a job in the prison library, where he was once tasked with setting up a counterterrorism display. Liking an Internet post with some text and a picture of a Molotov cocktail was enough to get Sergei Panarin jailed for three years on charges of "justifying terrorism" in Russia in 2015.
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