Russian who worked to deanonymize police and make apps for arrested protesters is jailed on drug charges

Alexander Litreyev was arrested in Yekaterinburg on charges of buying ecstasy

Alexey Bushmakov, an attorney representing information security specialist Alexander Litreyev, told Meduza that his client flew into Yekaterinburg on February 22 for personal reasons: He was meeting up with a young woman who had connected with him on Instagram. The trip was only supposed to last a single day. On February 23, Litreyev was scheduled to give a lecture in St. Petersburg about protection strategies against online scammers.

On the evening of February 22, Litreyev was stopped on the road. Traffic police surrounded his car, asking him to unlock his phone and display his most recent messages. Litreyev refused. Officers then forcibly arrested him, throwing him to the ground and tearing his sweater. The IT professional reported some “bodily injuries.”

Litreyev was transferred to Police Office Number 5 in Yekaterinburg. Two “MDMA [ecstasy] tablets weighing 0.49 and 0.38 grams” were found in his sock. Police officers also unlocked Litreyev’s telephone and interrogated him in the presence of an attorney. He was charged under Article 228, Part 1 of Russia’s Criminal Codex, which covers significant purchases of illegal narcotics without intent to distribute. The maximum sentence under the statute is three years in prison.

A court ordered the tech entrepreneur to be jailed for two months

Litreyev spent the night in a temporary holding cell. On February 24, Yekaterinburg’s Lenin District Court approved a petition from investigators to jail him until April 22: Because Litreyev holds an Estonian residency permit, investigators believed that he might attempt to escape prosecution. Litreyev pleaded guilty during the same hearing.

According to the Yekaterinburg news site E1, it emerged during the course of the hearing that after Litreyev arrived in the city to meet his new friend, the pair picked up a stash of drugs. On their way back, the entrepreneur was arrested because “information had reached the police that he was transporting narcotics.”

It also became clear during the hearing that the woman Litreyev was meeting in Yekaterinburg had testified against him. Bushmakov, Litreyev’s attorney, told Meduza that the woman is classified as a witness in his case.

Litreyev asked the court not to jail him because he serves as a caregiver for his mother. He also promised not to hide from authorities, saying he was willing to rent an apartment in Yekaterinburg and turn in his international passport to guarantee that he could not leave Russia. “The story of my life shows that I am not the kind of person who would pose a threat to society. […] It would be irrational to ruin my own reputation by trying to hide,” he explained to the court.

Police were aware of Litreyev’s efforts to combat censorship and police anonymity when they interrogated him

Attorney Alexey Bushmakov emphasized in an interview with Meduza that police officers were aware of Litreyev’s political involvement while they were questioning him. Bushmakov also said he believes his client was jailed and not released to await trial because of his political activities.

Litreyev was previously an activist for opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. In 2017, the tech specialist released an app called Red Button that allows human rights advocates to receive alerts when opposition activists are arrested illegally at protests. The app also alerts the friends and relatives of arrestees and automatically updates to display the police station where arrested protesters are taken.

During the Russian government’s effort to block the messaging and blogging app Telegram, Litreyev’s company, Vee Security Rossiya, offered users a proxy server to get around the government’s censorship policy. In the summer of 2019, while Muscovites protested en masse for fair elections, Litreyev created the Russky Slon (Russian Elephant) project to identify officers suspected of abusing their authority. The entrepreneur also runs a Telegram channel called Cybersecurity and Co.

Litreyev has been approached by Russia’s federal media regulation and censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, on multiple occasions because of his work. In 2017, for example the agency asked Russia’s federal police force to investigate Litreyev based on suspicions that he had “faked” government efforts to block certain websites.

In the summer of 2019, Alexander Litreyev emigrated to Estonia, where he holds a temporary residency permit. The other software developers working for his company have also left Russia due to escalating government attempts to control the country’s Internet.