A Moscow court tells Telegram that it misfiled its legal appeal

Moscow’s Tagansky District Court has decided to take no immediate actionon Telegram’s complaint against an April 13 ruling that authorized the federal censor to block the instant messenger in Russia. The court gave Telegram until June 4 to sort out the problems with its challenge, which it says should be submitted as a formal appeal along with a payment of all court fees, instead of the private complaint filed by the company’s lawyers.

According to the human rights advocate Pavel Chikov, whose “Agora” organization is representing Telegram, the company is within its rights to challenge the April 13 ruling through a private complaint. Chikov also accuses Moscow’s courts of having “insufficient knowledge of substantive and procedural law.”