‘Terrorism’ in Minecraft for Russia.
There Russia sentenced a teenager to five years in prison for plotting to blow up a government building. While it might not seem out of the ordinary, the building in question was a virtual recreation within the video game Minecraft.
Nikita Uvarov, Denis Mikhailenko and Bogdan Andreyev from Kansk in Siberia were arrested in June 2020 when they were only 14 years old. According to the Moscow Times, the trio were arrested for hanging leaflets on the real Federal Security Services (FSB) building which they called the agency “terrorist” and praised an anarchist mathematician who served six years in prison.
The FSB searched the young people’s phones and found videos of them making fireworks and allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at a wall. There was also evidence of a plot to blow up a virtual representation of the FSB building they had created in Minecraft. The three were accused of having undergone training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities, a violation of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation article 205.3. Mikhailenko and Andreyev pleaded guilty to the charges and were placed under house arrest. Uvarov denied his guilt and was held in a pre-trial detention center where he claims he was mentally and physically pressured to confess.
Last week, the eastern military court in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk found all the boys guilty. Mikhailenko and Andreyev were sentenced to three and four years with suspended sentences respectively, because they collaborated with investigators. Uvarov, found guilty of illegal possession of weapons and having undergone training for the implementation of a terrorist act, was sentenced to five years in a penal colony.
Source: The Moscow Times
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