Russian screenwriter Pavel Tetersky leaves country after terrorism accusation and 12-day arrest
Writer and screenwriter Pavel Tetersky has left Russia after serving a 12-day administrative arrest over what his lawyer called an invented hooliganism charge, following a home search in which security officers tried to accuse him of terrorism.
Russian writer and screenwriter Pavel Tetersky has left Russia, his lawyer, Oskar Cherdzhiev, announced on Telegram on August 12. The independent outlet Mediazona drew attention to the post.
Tetersky departed after being released from an administrative arrest, a short jail term Russian courts use to punish minor offenses. On July 31, a court in Khimki, near Moscow, ordered him held for 12 days at a special detention facility on a charge of petty hooliganism. Case documents state he was detained for kicking trash cans while drunk.
Search and terrorism accusation
Cherdzhiev said the report against Tetersky was based on "invented grounds." Before the arrest, security officers had also carried out an "inspection" of his apartment.
According to the lawyer, unidentified security officers entered Tetersky's apartment on July 30 and, under the pretext of an inspection, conducted an hours-long search. The search, he said, turned up nothing illegal.
Tetersky and his lawyer said that during the search, officers tried to accuse him of actions "of a terrorist nature," then made him promise on camera not to commit crimes against Russia's security.
Tetersky said he would not commit such crimes and never had, suggesting the officers may have simply been overzealous and mistaken him for someone else — not a person involved in terrorist activity, but perhaps someone who had said something inappropriate online.
A Word for the Defense, a Russian legal-aid group, said Tetersky was released from the detention facility on August 11.
In the 1990s, Tetersky and co-author Sergei Sakin published the novel "Bolshe Bena" ("Bigga Than Ben"), about two young Muscovites who move to London and get caught up in various, often criminal, escapades. The novel won the Debut Prize in 2000 and was later made into a British film of the same name, starring Andrei Chadov in one of the lead roles.
Tetersky's screenwriting credits also include the television series "Khoroshy chelovek" ("Good Person"), "Chelyuskin. Pervye" ("The First Ones"), "Trotsky," "Propavshaya" ("Missing"), and "Rezervatsiya" ("Reservation").
