Moscow court justifies 2 believers accused of destroying dubious exhibition

A Moscow district court dropped Monday the case of two Orthodox believers, who destroyed an unusual exhibition this past winter. The exhibition called Beware Religion! took place in the Sakharov Centre of Moscow in mid-January and presented exhibits humiliating their religious sentiments, as the believers assumed.

For instance, the exhibition displayed icons with fretwork in the shape of a hammer and a sickle and icons with holes instead of saints' images. Any visitor could put his face in the hole and thereby feel like a saint.

The court ruled to close the criminal case against Muscovites Mikhail Lyukshin and Anatoly Zyakin, who appeared at the exhibition and destroyed exhibits they thought the most odious. The judges saw nothing criminal in the believers' behaviour. On the contrary, the court supported the criminal case against organisers of the exhibition for enkindling religious enmity.