A Russian court issues an arrest warrant against chess master Garri Kasparov for terrorism

A Moscow court issued an arrest warrant this Tuesday against the thirteenth world chess champion, Garri Kasparov (1985-2000), for advocating and inciting terrorism through the media, crimes that can carry sentences of between five and seven years in prison.

The court has set a preventive detention sentence of at least two months from the moment Kasparov is arrested or extradited to Russia. The chess master currently resides in New York and had already been included in May 2022 on the list of foreign agents and shortly after on the list of extremists.

In October, Russian authorities already opened a case against Kasparov and other figures in the country, including the former head of the Yukos oil company, Mijail Khodorkovsky; or the former Russian Prime Minister Mijail Kasiánov, for crimes of terrorism and seizure of power by force.

The accusation maintains that as founders and members of the Russian Anti-War Committee organization, created in February 2022, they sought to overthrow the Government through force, in addition to financing the Ukrainian paramilitary forces, recognized as terrorists by Moscow.