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| - A Russian court on Monday ordered a member of punk protest group Pussy Riot, Pyotr Verzilov, jailed for 15 days for swearing, the activist said. His lawyer said the swearing case looked like a pretext to put him behind bars, calling the situation "a mystery." On Sunday morning police broke the door to his flat and took Verzilov to a police station for questioning about a mass protest last July. The activist said when he emerged from the station late Sunday, he was swiftly detained again and spent the night in police cells. "Their story is that I left the station after a 13-hour interrogation, swore, and policemen immediately arrested me," Verzilov said in a video posted on his Twitter account. "Their case file about me saying obscenities is 40 pages long," he tweeted. "The judge decided that I will be put under arrest for 15 days." Verzilov's lawyer Leonid Solovyov told AFP that police do not normally detain people for swearing, and punishing swearing with arrest is unheard of. "It's a mystery," he said. "This is the first time I'm seeing this, usually swearing leads to just a warning," he said. "It looks like somebody really wants to put him behind bars." Verzilov is a key member of the Pussy Riot punk protest group and active in the Russian opposition movement. He is a witness in the mass riot probe into the protest on July 27 against unfair elections, which has already seen several people sentenced to up to three years in prison. In 2018 Verzilov was the victim of suspected poisoning with a neurotoxin and was treated for a long time in Germany. He said later it was likely a professional hit. ma/pma
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