The action was brought by the Ingush prosecutor’s office. The judge Lidia Sokolova announced that the activity of the resource must have been blocked before 5 June. On that day the court is going to consider the case on its merit. The unprecedented character of the decision is that it’s been for the first time that the court has obliged all the Russian providers to block the access to the Ingushetia.ru site through “establishing the filtration of IP-addresses”.   

Never before have ordered Russian courts that providers restrict the access to Internet resources.  

The site itself was registered on the US territory, which means it is out of competence by Russian justice. This is the argument by the lawyers and by the owner of Ingushetia.ru Magomed Evloev. They are perplexed about how the court’s decision is going to be executed. “This decision is unlawful and technically impossible” said Magomed Evloev to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent. “According to the law, to execute the court’s decision it is necessary to issue writ of execution to the name of each Russian provider with the names of the companies pointed, and there are thousands of them in the country. The judge has not issued such writ of execution. If she considers that interests of the providers are involved in the case, they must be summoned to the court as the third party. That was not done either. It’s impossible technically to find such a huge number of companies in different cities. However, in principle the court might do it if it wished.”   

Reminding, the Ingush prosecutor’s office accuses the news portal of extremism and kindling the ethnic hostilities. From the very beginning the Ingush authorities insisted on closing the resource down. The reasons are obvious. The site publishes materials about Ossetian-Ingush conflict, about dispersals of the protesting pickets, about President Murat Zyazikov, about everyday explosions, murders and out-of-court reprisals. The photo evidence of the murdered and maimed people is published periodically.    

The getting down at the site has been more active during recent two months in relation to publishing the material about bashing of Murat Zyazikov by former deputy President’s Authorized Representative in the South Federal District, Musa Keligov.

Magomed Evloev has no doubt about political context of the case: “The site covers the situation in the republic independently from the local authorities’ opinion and not submitting to them. It appears that the court as if said to the prosecutor’s office: ‘well, you petition has been granted, now you try to execute it…’ ”  

Authorities have made a progress in this internet war that has been going on since 2003. The site was blocked on the republic’s territory in 2007. That was done in a dirty way: the Ingush interior ministry summoned the heads of the large provider firms and informed them in the presence of Rossvyaznadzor and RTRS that a personal instruction from President Murat Zyazikov had been issued about blocking the site with any means available. Soon the providers established redirection and the users who tried to open the www.ingushetia.ru site found themselves to get to a pornographic resource.   

However, the republican prosecutor’s office wanted more. It began to bring actions to different courts. It failed, though, with the Supreme Court of Russia that dismissed the complaint intended for closing the oppositionist site down. Then the prosecutor’s office decided to bring another action, to the Kunzevo district court, at the place of residence of Magomed Evloev. The end of this conflict will be known on the 5th June. The site’s owner and his lawyers state that the activity of the resource will not be stopped and they are going to appeal the court’s decision in the Moscow City Court.