Ivan Pavlov (lawyer)

Ivan Yuryevich Pavlov (Иван Юрьевич Павлов; born 1971 in St. Petersburg, Soviet Union) is a Russian advocate[1] and open government activist.

[2] He specializes in protecting the right to access government information in Russia, and defending citizens from ungrounded accusations of disclosing state secrets, high treason, and espionage.

After a series of court hearings where Pavlov and other lawyers of the FIF contested the "foreign agent" status, the Freedom of Information Foundation formally suspended its activities.

Several ex-FIF staff members, led by Pavlov, have been joined by Team 29,[5] the only[citation needed] Russian non-governmental initiative performing professional defense of the citizens’ right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce, and distribute information by legal means.

Team 29 transformed into a new organizational structure without having to create a legal entity, as a free partnership of lawyers, journalists, and civil activists.

On 16 July 2021, the website of Team 29 was blocked by Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media at the request of Prosecutor General of Russia.

[8] According to official letter, Prosecutor General of Russia identifies the Team 29 to Czech nonprofit organization "Společnost Svobody Informace" which was designated undesirable on 29 June 2021.

[10] In 2006, Pavlov initiated a court case that resulted in a judicial obligation for the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Russian: Rostechregulirovanie) to publish texts of national standards online.

In 2015, Team 29 lawyers, led by Pavlov, prepared a claim against President Vladimir Putin's decree classifying information on military personnel losses within special operations during peacetime.

[14] The ruling gives grounds to apply to the constitutional court and request a proper assessment of how information in Russia is classified as state secret.

Zoya Svetova, a Russian human rights journalist, has defined the current state of affairs as immersion of Russia by “spy mania”.

[16] Pavlov defended Alexander Nikitin, an environmentalist accused of high treason for having prepared the research report The Northern Fleet: A Potential Radioactive Contamination Threat for the Region.

[17] Nikitin was detained from February to December 1996; his case was widely covered by media, NGOs, and political organizations in Russia and Europe.

[21] In 1999, the military court of the Pacific Fleet sentenced Pasko to a year of imprisonment for abuse of official powers, immediately including amnesty; he was released from the courtroom.

On 25 December 2001 the military court of the Pacific Fleet found Pasko guilty of high treason in the form of espionage and sentenced him to four years of imprisonment.

[31] According to the investigation, Petrin had provided to the CIA representatives a piece of information comprising state secret when he had worked in the department of external church relations.

[32] On 14 June 2016 Petrin was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony and to a fine of 200 thousand rubles for espionage in favor of the US.

Earlier, one similar case was known: Ekaterina Kharebava, a market saleswoman from Sochi, was in 2014 sentenced by the Krasnodar Territorial Court to six years of imprisonment for espionage.

[43] The Team 29 found that since 2013, the Krasnodar Territorial Court had issued at least ten sentences in case on high treason and espionage, convicting Ekaterina Kharebava, Oksana Sevastidi, Annik Kesyan, Marina Dzhandzhgava, Inga Tutisani, Manana Kapanadze, Petr Parpulov, Leval Latariya, Georgy Pataraya, and Georgy Khurtsilava.

[46] The Team 29 journalists found that at least six women (Ekaterina Kharebava, Oksana Sevastidi, Annik Kesyan, Marina Dzhandzhgava, Inga Tutisani, and Manana Kapanadze) were convicted just for SMS messages on open movements of military equipment to their acquaintances in Georgia.

On 16 March 2018 Ivan Pavlov informed on entrance of the case of Petr Parpulov, an ex-flight dispatcher from Sochi convicted by the Krasnodar Territorial Court.

[51] Parpulov was convicted to 12 years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony in January 2016 for high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of Russia).

The Natalia Sharina case Ivan Pavlov defended Natalia Sharina, ex-Director of the Library for Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, accused of distribution of extremist literature through the library (Article 282 of the Criminal Code of Russia, part 2) and of misspending of money spent for lawyers; work (Article 160, part 4).

[56] Pavlov is sure that “the case of Scientologists is a shameful page in the new history of Russian justice” since he believes that “they persecute them for their faith, trying to consider them extremists” and that “FSB already tries to dictate to the public what gods they may or may not worship”.

[64] Ivan Pavlov defended Mikhail Suprun, a historian accused of privacy abuse in 2009 for preparing a memory book of Soviet political repression victims.

In January 2014, the European Court for Human Rights started communicating with the Government of the Russian Federation upon the application from Suprun and Pavlov.

In December 2016, he left the job and submitted to the Ministry for Interior, to the Investigative Committee, to public prosecution, and to some other government bodies tens of complaints against labor law violations, procedural breaches, and ethics abuse by officials.

Since August 2017, Eivazov, suffering from severe bronchial asthma, is kept in a pre-trial detention center; his defending attorneys filed a number of motion for his hospitalization.

[78] Ivan Pavlov left Russia on 7 September 2021 due to the impossibility to proceed his activity as an advocate as a result of the persecution by Russian authorities.

[80] Ivan Pavlov stated that he would not mark his messages in social media as "distributed by foreign agent", as required by Russian law.