Photo: OVD-Info

A janitor from the Chelyabinsk region in the Russian Urals has been charged with justifying terrorism for one word in a comment on a social media post, Russian human rights group OVD-Info said on Monday.

Gulnara Bakhareva told OVD-Info that she had been charged on the basis of the words “I am proud”, which in Russian can be expressed in a single word. Bakhareva left her comment in October 2023 on a Telegram post marking the birthday of political prisoner Alexey Nuriev. Nuriev, who comes from the same region as Bakhareva, was sentenced to 19 years in prison in April 2023 for setting fire to a military enlistment office.

Russian Federal Security Service officers came to Bakhareva’s home and confiscated her phone on 2 October. When Bakhareva asked what the charges related to, she was told it was to her expression of pride. “So for a word, one single word. They carried out a linguistic analysis and decided it qualified as justifying terrorism,” Bakhareva continued.

“I will probably be in the Guinness Book of Records soon because I’ve never heard of another case being opened against someone for a single word,” Bakhareva said.

It is the second time Bakhareva has been charged with justifying terrorism. In November 2023, she was fined 400,000 rubles (€4,100) for an online comment where she said that the Crimean Bridge linking annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland was a “legitimate military target”.