Russian investigators have dropped the charges against Dagir Khasavov, a lawyer who warned last April of "bloodshed in Moscow" if Shariah law was not introduced in Russia, Khasavov’s lawyer Sergei Belyakov said on Ekho Moskvy radio on Monday.
“It is a complete and unconditional victory,” Belyakov said, adding that Khasavov, who fled to Europe in the wake of his controversial statements, would soon return to Russia.
Belyakov received official notice from investigators on Friday that the case has been terminated because there were no grounds to prosecute, he said.
Speaking in an interview to Ren television in April, Khasavov said that if adherents of Islam in Russia were required to take their cases to secular courts instead of Shariah ones, “Moscow [would] be covered in blood and turned into a second Dead Sea.”
The phrase earned him a criminal case on extremism charges, punishable with up to two years in prison.
