Prize-winning playwright and theater director arrested as part of ‘justification of terrorism’ investigation
Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case in connection with a theatrical production of Svetlana Petriychuk’s prize-winning play “Finist the Bright Falcon.” The production was directed by Zhenya Berkovich, a member of the Seventh Studio, a theater project founded by Kirill Serebrennikov.
Petriychuk’s play tells the story of several Russian women who start online relationships with radicalized Muslim men and decide to move to Syria to join them.
The investigators are trying to establish that the play and its stage production contain terrorist propaganda, violating the Russian law against “justification of terrorism.”
Zhenya Berkovich has been arrested in Moscow. Her mother says that detectives raided the family’s home in St. Petersburg. The playwright Svetlana Petriychuk is also in custody.
The civil liberties group OVD-Info reports that the prosecution launched a criminal case on the grounds that a “violation” had taken place, but without naming any suspects, and that Berkovich is only a witness in the case. At the same time, TASS suggests the opposite, that Berkovich is being prosecuted as a suspect.
