MOSCOW, November 11 (RIA Novosti) – A Moscow court on Monday doled out brief jail sentences to two activists from an unregistered opposition party who had been arrested for yelling insults and throwing a tomato at the Dutch royal couple before a concert in Moscow.
Denis Kudryavtsev will spend 15 days in jail, and Viktoria Kuznetsova – 10 days, said a spokesman for the Other Russia party, Alexander Averin.
The incident took place on Saturday when Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima came out of their limousine and walked on a red carpet toward the entrance of the Moscow Conservatory building to attend the ceremonial closure of a year dedicated to celebrating Dutch-Russian ties.
Two young people from the crowd of onlookers reportedly started shouting “You have Dolmatov’s blood on your hands!” and threw a tomato at the royal couple. The tomato missed the intended target, and the couple proceeded to the entrance without responding to the insults.
Police detained the activists and escorted them to a patrol van parked nearby.
Spokesman Averin told RIA Novosti after the incident that the activists were protesting the negligence of the Dutch government that led to the death of fellow party member Alexander Dolmatov in a Dutch prison earlier this year.
Dolmatov, whom Russian authorities wanted to question in connection with a violent opposition rally in Moscow in May 2012, killed himself in a Rotterdam deportation center on January 17 after being refused political asylum in the Netherlands.
The Dutch Justice Ministry later acknowledged that agencies dealing with immigration issues “acted carelessly” in the treatment of Dolmatov.
The Other Russia was founded by Eduard Limonov in 2010 after his radical National Bolshevik party was banned in 2007. Limonov’s new party was denied registration by the Federal Registration Service in 2011 because “it did not have enough popular support among the Russian people.”