A blogger has been given a
suspended jail sentence by a
court in Russia after he
posted a video of him playing
the Pokemon Go video game
inside a church last year.


Ruslan Sokolovsky was found
guilty of inciting religious
hatred inside a Russian
Orthodox church after he
posted the video on YouTube
which has attracted more than 1.9 million views.


On Thursday, the court also
sentenced the 22-year-old to
160 hours of compulsory
community service and told
him not to appear in public
places. i Russian prosecutors had
earlier called for a three-and-
a-half year jail sentence for
the blogger in a case that has
drawn ire from rights
activists. Sokolovsky - dubbed a prisoner of conscience by
Amnesty International - was
detained and charged under
controversial legislation for
"inciting hatred" and "insulting the feelings of
religious believers" before
being put on trial.


"There are no grounds to let
the defendant go
unpunished," Russian news
agencies had quoted a
prosecutor as saying in court. Pokemon Go, jointly
developed by Nintendo Co
and Niantic Inc, generated
masses of followers around
the world as players use their
phones to capture animated characters that appear in real locations.

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