Russian Jew faces 4 years in penal colony over Facebook post protesting Ukraine invasion

A 66-year-old Jewish Russian citizen has been held in custody for the past seven months after sharing a Facebook post urging Russians to take to the streets to protest the invasion of Ukraine. At a Friday court hearing on the case, the prosecutor asked that the man, Lev Lerman, be sentenced to four years in a penal colony. The court is expected to deliver its verdict on Monday.

Lerman, who is a resident of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, is charged with organizing an unauthorized public gathering and was initially placed in nine days of administrative detention. While in custody, his home was searched, and authorities said they found 10 hunting rifle bullets in a basement storage area. As a result, Lerman was also accused of possession of ammunition and his detention was extended. Lerman’s wife, Olga, alleges that the bullets were planted during the search.

“On more than one occasion, [Lerman] has expressed himself to those around him on the necessity of leaving Russia, because, in his opinion, it was impossible to live here due to the absence of democracy, rights and individual freedoms,” said a report in his case issued by a lieutenant colonel in the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service. According to Lerman’s lawyer, the report has been used as a pretext for holding him in detention for the duration of his trial.

The judges’ decision not to free him subject to restrictions was based in part on a statement from an FSB official that “following his release or conviction on probation, Lerman intends to immediately leave Russia and try to obtain political asylum in a European Union country.” The official also noted that Lerman has a daughter, Yulia Epstein, who lives in Israel. She has Israeli citizenship.

“Lerman has visited his daughter in Israel several times and views that country as a possible place for emigration from Russia,” the official stated. “According to Lerman’s neighbors, his daughter has expressed a readiness and desire to receive her parents as permanent residents.”

In ordering Lerman to remain in custody during the trial, the judge noted that in addition to his daughter, who has lived in Israel for 12 years, Lerman has relatives in Ukraine, “to which he traveled more than once between 2014 and 2019.”

Lerman has participated in various political groups and has not hesitated to state his views on Facebook, including voicing his support for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is incarcerated in a Russian penal colony. But he has never been a prominent activist in an opposition group or political organization.

In the past, Lerman and his wife considered moving to Israel. Olga Lerman recounted that when the war in Ukraine erupted at the end of February, they were unsuccessful in contacting the representative in Nizhny Novgorod of the Jewish Agency, which handles immigration to Israel, but they had met with the representative in the past. They also tried to contact the synagogue in their city that Jewish Agency representatives have attended but got no answer.

In Moscow, court proceedings are currently underway on a Russian Justice Ministry request to shut down the Jewish Agency’s operations in the country. Jewish Agency officials have told Haaretz that they knew nothing at the time about the bid to close down their operations.

The Lermans also delayed pursuing immigration to Israel because they are not vaccinated against COVID-19 and were concerned that they would not be allowed entry to the country.

One day, as the couple was leaving their apartment, they found law enforcement officials waiting for them. “We went down several steps and heard voices,” Olga Lerman recounted.

“Is that him?” she heard someone say, after which the response came: “Yes, that’s him… Grab him!” Lerman’s wife recalled. “Several men pounced on Lev, pulled his arms behind his back, [and] told me to go upstairs. When I asked what was happening, they responded: ‘Don’t ask questions. It’s for your own good,’” she said.

Their apartment was searched, and the following day, officials from the FSB security service returned with Lev Lerman. At that point, his wife recounted, she thought that he had been released, but it transpired that they had come to confiscate various household items, including her classical music CDs. On March 12, a day before Lerman’s initial detention had been due to end, representatives from the FSB, from an investigation committee and the police arrived accompanied by two neighbors and searched the basement.

One investigator claimed that he had found the 10 rifle bullets in the basement when he was down there alone, Olga Lerman said. “The investigator came out of the basement and said, ‘Look what I found. Now we’ll see what this is.’”

“He opened a rag and there were bullets there. I told everyone that we never had such a rag, but one of the neighbors responded: ‘It’s unbelievable. I thought they were decent people, and they’ve been keeping rifle bullets,” Olga Lerman recounted. “I didn’t reply to her at all. I wasn’t going to start justifying myself in front of them.”

Immediately after the search, the investigators pressured Olga Lerman to go with them to the Lermans’ nearby country dacha, but she said she was afraid that they would plant evidence there. She insisted on calling a lawyer and refused to go with them.

That same day, she left home with a small bag, so as not to arouse the neighbors’ suspicions. She left Nizhny Novgorod and made her way to Israel.

“I don’t view myself as a [criminal] defendant or standing trial,” Lev Lerman told the court on Friday in summary remarks that he made. “A civil war has been waged in our country for the past 105 years,” he said in reference to the 1917 Russian Revolution, “and I have been taken hostage by it. The events of recent months and most of the years of my life testify to the fact that the criminal case against me is political and that the verdict won’t be a criminal punishment but rather an act of political oppression.”

“Possession of ammunition is a moderate offense and incarceration until the end of the proceedings is not customary for it,” Lerman’s lawyer, Alexei Vitushkin, told Haaretz. “In my ten years of experience, I haven’t encountered a case in which someone with such [a background], without any criminal convictions, of an advanced age and with positive references is kept behind bars until the end of his trial.”