According to Znak.com , the reason for the prosecution of Savelyev was the initiation of a criminal case against him under the article on “illegal access to computer information” (part 2 of article 272 of the Criminal Code). The Saratov MIA Administration said that the security forces are preparing documents to declare Savelyev on the international wanted list.
“According to the investigation, Savelyev provided access to legally protected computer information, which entailed copying information”, - the newspaper notes.
If the programmer is caught and brought to justice, he could face up to four years in prison.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the case against Savelyev was opened on September 30. Savelyev gained fame after he gave numerous videos of the torture of prisoners in Russian prisons to the human rights project Gulagu.net. Since October 4, the activists of the project began to publish a video with horrifying footage of torture, rape and torture of prisoners in the Saratov colonies.
Soon after human rights defenders published videos of torture of convicts in the tuberculosis hospital of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Saratov region, the Investigative Committee opened several criminal cases under articles of sexual assault and abuse of power, the head of the torture hospital was fired from his job, and the head of the regional Federal Penitentiary Service wrote a statement himself about resignation.
Sergei Savelyev began collecting shocking video evidence of torture in prisons when the prison staff ordered him to maintain cameras and video recorders in OTB-1.
Horrified by the scale of the bullying and cruelty of the jailers, Savelyev began to methodically collect evidence of the crimes of the FSIN officers. Having freed himself from the colony, he managed to transfer an array of collected information to human rights defenders.
Immediately after that, threats began against him from the side of law enforcement officers, who were outraged not so much by the fact of crimes committed in the colonies and by the sadism of the FSIN officers, but by the "removal of litter from the hut". After talking with the security officials who threatened Savelyev with murder, the programmer urgently left the territory of the Russian Federation and requested political asylum in France.
* According to the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, the organization was recognized as a "foreign agent", stopped working on the territory of the Russian Federation.