Russian Federation: Court of Novosibirsk sentences resident to 3.5 years in strict regime colony for alleged HIV transmission

The Zayeltsovsky District Court of Novosibirsk sentenced a local resident to 3.5 years in a strict regime colony for transmitting HIV to his partner. In addition, he must pay her 3 million rubles in compensation for moral damages. In an interview with Precedent, a woman named Svetlana said that she had been dating a former prisoner for several years. According to the woman, he knew about his diagnosis but did not say anything about it. Then he was imprisoned again for theft, Svetlana accidentally found out from a mutual friend that he had HIV and decided to get tested herself. It turned out to be positive. “I was sicker than I had ever been in my life, and for a long time, I didn’t understand what was wrong. It all came out when they put him away again. Prisoners in the cell communicate and know everything about each other. And then my friend found out from her friend that Mikhail had HIV. She immediately told me. I told him that I would go to law enforcement agencies, but he said wait, I will be released and I will prove to you that I myself am a victim,” said Svetlana. For a year she tried to prove that Mikhail gave her HIV intentionally. She wrote a complaint about the police work to Minister of Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev, after which investigators finally filed a criminal complaint against Mikhail under part 2 of Article 122 of the Criminal Code (“Infection of another person with HIV by a person who knew he had the disease”). It turned out that the man found out his HIV status back in 2014, but in court he denied his guilt. As a result, Mikhail was found guilty of deliberately contracting HIV. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in a strict regime penal colony. He also had to pay three million rubles as compensation for moral damages. In late 2020, the Eurasian Women’s AIDS Network published data on monitoring HIV criminalization in Russia. According to the study, Russia holds one of the leading positions in the world in terms of the number of HIV-related convictions under Article 122 of the Russian Criminal Code.

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