On December 12, 2013 Leninsky district court of Saint Petersburg held its session to consider the request of the prosecutor\u2019s office that ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d should be obliged to register its logo and should get itself registered in the list of \u201cNGOs performing the functions of foreign agents\u201d. During these most recent court hearings \u2013 the sixth since the case had been initiated against ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d \u2013 the procurator\u2019s office introduced a new request already during the hearings. It reads that the NGO should not only register itself in the list of NGOs serving the functions of foreign agents, but that the court should rule that all activities of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d should be considered those of a foreign agent.<\/p>\n
The court has fully satisfied all the demands of the plaintiff, i.e. the prosecutor\u2019s office, recognizing all the activities of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d as activities \u00a0of a foreign agent. The court obliged the organization to apply for inclusion of ADC “Memorial” into the respective list of the Ministry of justice and also register its logo.<\/p>\n
Until today’s court hearings, the court had only considered the claims of the prosecutors that it was the publication and dissemination of the report \u201cRoma, migrants, activists – victims of police abuse\u201d<\/a> that made ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d \u00a0a foreign agent, as well as the counterclaims by the defence that argued that the report had been absolutely legitimate, aimed solely at protecting the rights of vulnerable groups and, besides that, had been prepared and disseminated before the new provisions of the law on NGOs came into force.<\/p>\n But on December 12, 2013 the prosecutors suddenly renounced all their previous attempts to prove the \u201cguilt\u201d of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d for the report (which in fact had failed during court hearings held before). The main argument of the procurators during the final court session was that all of the activities of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d fall under the definition of \u201cperforming the functions of a foreign agent\u201d. The most amazing part was that this was a completely new word of the prosecutors in legal terms and that they failed to specify which particular activities of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d were the subject for consideration as illegal activities. The court decided to agree with the prosecutors on all points. \u201cGuilty of activity\u201d, the verdict de facto reads. This very argument had been earlier expressed by the procurator Chubykin, who had made a written appeal