He is 66 years old and could be sent to prison for up to a year and a month on October 29, 2024 on charges of incitement to hatred. Allegedly on his behalf he published posts calling for the extermination of Latvians. In addition, in the IMHOclub case, Jury could be sent to prison for up to 7-8 years under the article for “causing harm to the Republic of Latvia by a group of persons by prior conspiracy”. The maximum term under this article is 15 years. According to Yuri, he had been preparing to escape all night. In the morning, he left the apartment in Riga, got to Vilnius, bought a bus ticket to Minsk and crossed the border.
Recall, Yuri Alekseev is a Russian-speaking journalist and publicist working in Latvia. He is the creator and head of the online discussion platform IMHOclub. Alekseev has been a figure in the case since 2017, when he was detained by Latvia's State Security Service over accusations of publishing comments inciting ethnic discord.
The special service conducted a series of searches at the journalist's home, finding pistol cartridges and child pornography materials allegedly belonging to Yuri Alekseev. It is indicative that the journalist's fingerprints were not found on the cartridges, nor was the gun found.
The linguistic conclusion, which determined that the comments were not written by Alekseev, was also against the investigation's version. Technical analysis showed that the journalist did not visit the sites where the texts attributed to him were posted. But this evidence of Alekseev's innocence was not taken into account by the court when passing sentence.