A Russian Minecraft player has been sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to blow up the Federal Security Services (FSB) building in-game.
The player, 16-year-old Nikita Uranov, has been charged with training for terrorist activities by a Siberian military court on Thursday, according to The Moscow Times. In June 2020, Uranov and his friends, Denis Mikhailenko and Bogdan Andreyev were arrested for hanging political leaflets on the local FSB offices bearing slogans like “the FSB is the main terrorist” in support of Moscow mathematician and anarchist Azat Miftakhov, who was sentenced to six years in prison for vandalism. They were 14 at the time of the arrest.
When police took the teens’ phones, they discovered a plot to blow up a virtual FSB building they had created within Minecraft.
Uranov pleaded not guilty in court and was placed in a pre-trial detention center, where he claimed that the authorities subjected him to physical and mental torture to get him to confess his guilt during the investigation. “I am not a terrorist, I am not guilty. I would just like to finish my studies, get an education and go somewhere far away from here, somewhere I don’t irritate anyone from the special services,” he said in his closing statement to the court.
The teen was sentenced to five years in a penal colony. The other two were handed three and four-year suspended sentences.
According to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, human rights activists claim that all aspects of the case, including the attempt to blow up the FSB building in Minecraft, are part of a pattern of Russian state security forces targeting teenagers to create an atmosphere of fear among young people critical of the country’s government. Even so, it’s important for teens to be careful of what they do in video games because the police will take their actions and words seriously.
