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| - A Moscow court on Friday handed outspoken Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov a three-year suspended sentence following a fraud conviction denounced by his supporters as politically motivated. "Serebrennikov's rehabilitation is possible without a real prison term," judge Olesya Mendeleyeva said, adding that the acclaimed theatre and film director would have to pay a fine, be on probation for three years and be banned from overseeing a cultural organisation. "No comment," Serebrennikov, 50, said after the sentence was delivered, his face covered in a black mask as he followed the proceedings. Hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside the courthouse broke into applause on hearing news of the sentence. "Kirill is devastated by the conviction but very happy to be going home," his lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov said. Prosecutors had asked for a six-year prison term for Serebrennikov, who was on Friday found guilty of misappropriating the equivalent of two million dollars in state funds meant for a theatrical project. The judge had said that Serebrennikov and co-defendants Yury Itin and Konstantin Malobrodsky "carried out actions directed at personal enrichment" that misled employees of the culture ministry. Itin and Malobrodsky were also given suspended sentences and ordered to pay fines. The prosecution had been criticised in Russia and abroad as trying to clamp down on artistic freedom. Serebrennikov is known for daring statements and ground-breaking projects, some of which have angered conservatives. He has also criticised censorship of the arts in Russia, warning that "everything is returning to the most pathetic Soviet practices". A fourth defendant in the case, Sofia Apfelbaum, was "unaware" of the fraud but had acted with negligence, the judge said. She was also given a fine but it was immediately rescinded. Serebrennikov, who heads one of Moscow's top theatre venues, the Gogol Centre, was arrested in 2017 but the case against him stalled last year when a judge handed it back to the prosecution due to "inconsistencies". It restarted with a new judge, and the amount of the alleged fraud was slightly revised from 133 million rubles to 129 million rubles. Serebrennikov spent more than a year and a half under house arrest but was finally allowed to return to work, leading many to believe the case would be dropped. But on Friday, the judge backed charges by the prosecution that Serebrennikov masterminded the theft of state money allocated to the Platforma project he ran between 2011 and 2014. Serebrennikov and his co-defendants insisted they are innocent. With coronavirus restrictions still observed in Moscow, only a small number of people were allowed in the courtroom, but hundreds of supporters gathered outside, greeting Serebrennikov with applause before the hearing. "Platforma was an incredible project, it gave huge opportunities to contemporary artists, composers, directors, actors who had nowhere to go," one of the supporters outside, actor Gladston Makhib, told AFP. He said it was Serebrennikov had paved the way for the "underground to become mainstream". But traditionalists attacked Serebrennikov's work after he rebranded the Gogol Centre from a dusty venue to a top location on Moscow's cultural map. A group of pro-Kremlin activists staged a protest in 2015, saying directors who "mock the classics" should not receive state funds. Top arts figures slammed the prosecution's claim that the Platforma project cost much less than the state funds provided. The defence argued the project actually required more investment than the provided funds. One of Russia's most acclaimed directors, Serebrennikov has created works spanning from opera to theatre and film, with productions regularly winning awards. Artistic figures abroad spoke out in his defence including Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen. German arts figures including director Thomas Ostermeier gathered near the Russian embassy in Berlin Friday with a huge banner reading "Free Kirill", while Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert urged Moscow to respect freedom of artistic expression. mp-ma-mm/wai
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