Playwright Svetlana Petriychuk was put on probation in a pre-trial detention center

Playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, the author of the play “Finist Yasnyi Sokol”, was placed on preventive detention in the pre-trial detention center, where she is being held after her arrest in early May. The Telegram channel of her supporters reported that Petriychuk is registered as “a person prone to committing crimes of a terrorist nature and extremist orientation.”

The screenwriter’s husband, Yury Shekhvatov, noted that in practice this could mean changing the conditions of detention at the discretion of the pre-trial detention center administration, preventive talks and special monitoring.

Playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and theater director Evgenia Berkovich were detained on May 4. State authorities saw in the play “Finist the Bright Falcon” a justification for terrorism. The play, staged by Berkovych based on Petrychuk’s play, is based on real stories and court sentences of Russian women who married Islamist militants and were involved in terrorism by their husbands. At the time of the arrest of the theater actresses, the performance had already been running on the Moscow stage for the third hour and was twice awarded with the main Russian theater prize “Golden Mask”.

Dozens of Russian scientists have signed an open petition demanding a review of the expertise in the case of Berkovich and Petrychuk, which revealed signs of a crime. According to scientists, Roman Silantyev, an expert involved in the case, who calls himself a “destructologist”, is a representative of pseudoscience, and his expertise is not authorized. The Russian Jewish Congress and the Spiritual Administration of Muslims criticized the examination.