14-year-old becomes youngest person on Russia’s ‘terrorists and extremists’ registry

A 14-year-old in the Russian city of Barnaul, in southern Siberia, has become the youngest person on the authorities’ list of “terrorists and extremists” after he was accused of setting fire to a police vehicle.

Ivan Maltsev, who celebrated a birthday in June, is "being accused of the arson of a police vehicle, even though no arson took place", his father told the independent outlet Mediazona. According to him, the case is based on messages that were sent at the beginning of the summer, before the teenager reached the legal minimum age for being added to the “terrorists and extremists” list.

“He was recruited, you could say. [The recruiters] sent him messages and threatened him. They scared him, telling him his parents would be prosecuted. He was scared by it,” his father said.

The boy is currently at home on house arrest. The exact charges against him are not specified in the list entry. The previous youngest person on the registry was Viktor Kalinin from St. Petersburg, who was born in April 2012; a court likewise placed him under house arrest rather than pretrial detention.