Investigators have opened a criminal case against a 27-year-old Moscow resident accused of inciting hatred against nationalist skinheads more than a year ago.
The suspect, identified by the BBC's Russian Service as Andrei Ivanov, encouraged hostility toward the nationalist group by showing a video urging violence against them in a Vladimir cafe in June 2011, investigators said in a statement Monday.
Ivanov, who investigators said supports the Antifa movement, faces up to two years in jail if the charges are proved. In the statement, investigators cited "skinheads" as the social group Ivanov offended.
Svetlana Sidorkina, Ivanov's lawyer, told the BBC that "Russian Anti-Racist Skinheads," the video Ivanov showed, is not included in the government's list of banned extremist content.
Sidorkina described watching the film as informative and said it explained the development of the skinhead subculture in Russia.
Ivanov himself told Dozhd TV that he was bemused by investigators actions.
This is not the first time that authorities have pressured anti-fascist groups before. Police arrested anti-fascist environmental activists Alexei Gaskarov and Maxim Solopov, accusing them of storming an administrative building for the Moscow town of Khimki in July 2010.
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