He was found guilty of “terrorist activity training.”
A Russian adolescent was sentenced to five years in prison for planning a terrorist attack on a government building… in the video game Minecraft.
Nikita Uvarov, 16, will spend the next five years in a prison colony after a Siberian military court convicted him guilty of “terrorist training,” according to The Guardian.
Uvarov was arrested with two other teenagers in the summer of 2020, when he was 14, for distributing pamphlets in support of Azat Miftakhov, a mathematician and political activist who was also detained on terrorism allegations.
One of the pamphlets was left on the building of the local Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor of the Soviet-era KGB.
Agents said they found proof the trio were intending to blow up an FSB building, albeit a virtual one they were going to build in the popular building game Minecraft, when they arrested them and confiscated their phones.
They also said the teenagers had been practicing detonations in abandoned buildings while studying how to create actual explosives.
The three were originally charged with “engaging in a terrorist group,” but the allegations were dismissed due to a lack of proof, according to the site.
Two of the teenagers were handed suspended sentences for unlawful firearms possession after collaborating with authorities after the hearing, which was held behind closed doors.
Uvarov, on the other hand, pleaded not guilty, claiming that he had no intention of doing so.
He told the court if he was given prison time, he would serve it “with a clear conscience and dignity.”
“For the last time in this court I want to say: I am not a terrorist,” he declared.
Prosecutors had pushed for a nine year sentence. He was given five.
“It was painful for me to see how my country oppresses people, civil rights activists, who want the best for the country and stand for its well-being,” he said in his final statement, per Radio Free Europe. “Now, unfortunately, I am experiencing myself the despotism of the unfair collaborators of the system.”
