The court softened the treatment regime in a mental hospital for shaman Gabyshev

This decision was made by the Ussuriysky District Court, Interfax reports with reference to the statement of Gabyshev's defender Alexey Pryanishnikov. The lawyer explained that shaman Gabyshev will not go home yet and not to Moscow, Yakutsk — after the court decided to transfer him to a more lenient treatment in a psychiatric hospital of a general type.

«According to the established procedure, it will be the Yakut neuropsychiatric dispensary», — the message says.

Earlier in this hospital, Gabyshev was declared insane.

The shaman was sent to a mental hospital for treatment after in 2019 he announced his hiking trip to Moscow in order to «restore democracy» and «expel Putin.» In two years he intended to cover 8000 km on foot from Yakutia to the Russian capital.

However, the shaman failed to complete the journey: security forces detained Gabyshev on the highway. A case was opened against the shaman on calls to extremism. However, by a court decision, instead of a colony, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment. For several years, the defense tried to appeal against the forced psychiatric hospitalization of Gabyshev, insisting on his full sanity. However, the court repeatedly refused the lawyers, extending the shaman's stay in the hospital.

In such circumstances, human rights activists appealed to the UN with a complaint about the forced treatment of a shaman, which, in their opinion, is not medical, but punitive.

Gabyshev's defense has repeatedly petitioned for the release of the ward, but the courts continue to extend the terms of compulsory psychiatric treatment of the shaman.

At the same time, the defense managed to get Gabyshev transferred from Novosibirsk Psychiatric Hospital of a specialized type with intensive supervision to a hospital with milder conditions in Ussuriysk.

Now he will also be softened by the treatment regime when transferred to Yakutsk.