A Russian man is facing a jail time of three and half years for
playing PokemonGo in church after a state prosecutor demanded his imprisonment on
the basis of inciting religious hatred, a news source revealed.
According to local news reports,
the Russian 22 years Ruslan Sokolovsky published an online video in which he
was playing PokemonGo in a Yekaterinburg church in which he compared Jesus
Christ to the PokemonGo game. The 22-year-old blogger was jailed shortly after
the video went live.
The State prosecutor while
addressing the court last week Friday, argued that Sokolovsy used the popular
augmented reality (AR) mobile game to mock Christian values and incite
religious hatred, the prosecutor then backed his claim by quoting some ‘strong’
language which the blogger used in the video. The prosecutor asked that the defendant
be served a 42 month sentence.
The defendant on his part
pleaded not guilty to any of the accusations labeled on him adding that he had
already been jailed for three months and placed under house arrest over what he
thought was a joke. He went on to argue that he was in no way a religious
extremist nor were his intentions meant to incite any religious hatred. “Maybe I’m
an idiot, but not in any way an extremist,” Sokolovsky said.