Screenwriter Pavel Tetersky leaves Russia after terrorism accusation, 12-day arrest
The writer and screenwriter Pavel Tetersky has left Russia, his lawyer, Oskar Cherdzhiev, said on Telegram on August 12. Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet, drew attention to the post.
Tetersky left after being released from administrative arrest — a short jail term Russian courts impose for minor offenses. On July 31, Moscow’s Khimki Court ordered him held for 12 days at a special detention center on an administrative charge of petty hooliganism. According to the case file, he was detained after kicking trash cans while drunk.
Cherdzhiev said the report against Tetersky was drawn up “on invented grounds.” Before Tetersky’s arrest, security officers also carried out an “inspection of the premises” at his home.
“On July 30, unidentified security officers broke into his apartment and, under the guise of inspecting the premises, carried out an hours-long search,” Cherdzhiev said. The “inspection,” he said, turned up nothing illegal.
Tetersky and Cherdzhiev said security officers tried to accuse him of “actions of a terrorist nature” during the search, then made him promise on camera not to commit crimes against Russia’s security.
“I won’t commit [such crimes], and I never have … I think our friends just got a little overzealous and grabbed the wrong guy — not someone doing terrorist work, but someone who maybe said the wrong thing online,” Tetersky said.
A Word for the Defense, a Russian legal-aid group, said Tetersky was released from the detention center on August 11.
In the 1990s, Tetersky and Sergei Sakin published the novel Bolshe Bena (Bigga Than Ben), about the adventures, many of them criminal, of two young Muscovites who move to London. The novel won the Debut Prize in 2000. It was later adapted into a British film of the same name, with Andrei Chadov in one of the two lead roles.
Tetersky’s screen credits also include the television series Khoroshy chelovek (“Good Person”), Chelyuskin. Pervye (“The First Ones”), Trotsky, Propavshaya (“Missing”), and Rezervatsiya (“Reservation”).
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