A human rights activist and two associates on trial for allegedly inciting religious hatred with a controversial museum exhibit won a small victory Wednesday when a judge sent the case back to prosecutors, defense lawyers said.
The Taganka district court said there were problems with the indictment and gave prosecutors five days to correct them.
Defense lawyer Sergei Nasonov welcomed the decision but argued that five days wasn't enough to "correct everything (prosecutors) did wrong" and fix charges that he called "absurd."
The exhibit held last year at Moscow's Andrei Sakharov Museum by about 40 artists and titled "Caution, Religion" included a Russian Orthodox-style icon with a hole instead of a head where visitors could insert their faces. Another work featured a Coca-Cola logo with Jesus' face drawn next to it and the words, "This is my blood."
The exhibit angered members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who called it blasphemous and insulting, and led to the charges against museum manager Yuri Samodurov, his colleague and one of the artists.
Samodurov and his colleague, Lyudmila Vasilovskaya, face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $17,000 if found guilty of inciting religious hatred. Artist Anna Mikhalchuk faces up to four years in prison and a fine.
All three pleaded innocent. Their lawyers told the court on the trial's opening day Tuesday that the accusations were vague and did not correspond to the wording of the law on the books at the time of the exhibit.
Nasonov also said prosecutors improperly tried to lump three separate charges together.
Samodurov had said the exhibit had no ill intent and that it aimed to advocate respect toward religion while cautioning against fanaticism.
The exhibit was vandalized four days after its opening. Six attackers were detained and charged with hooliganism, but the charges were dropped after a publicity campaign conducted by a Russian Orthodox priest.
The case was reminiscent of Soviet-era crackdowns on avant-garde art.
"For the first time since the Soviet era, we are dealing with a trial of ideology," Lev Ponomaryov, head of the All-Russian Public Movement for Human Rights, had said. "The state is on the side of Orthodox radicals."
About two-thirds of Russia's 144 million people are considered Orthodox Christians. After decades of state-sponsored atheism, destroyed churches have been rebuilt and many Russians have embraced the Church and its rituals.
The dominance of the church with its close state ties has also prompted concern among religious minorities and professed atheists who claim that religious symbolism is as omnipresent and oppressive as atheism was in Soviet times.