U.S. citizen detained in Russia for using obscene language, Kommersant newspaper says
MOSCOW (Reuters) -A U.S. citizen has been detained for 10 days by a Russian court for using obscene language during a police search of his apartment, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Prosecutors said the U.S. citizen, named as 36-year-old Angelo Joseph Talarico the Fourth, swore in English at police officers who arrived at the Moscow apartment of his wife to conduct a search as part of an investigation into bitcoin theft in the Murmansk region, the paper said.
A police report said that the American, who moved to Russia from Los Angeles, shouted at the officers and used two distinct words “the meaning of which they understood”, Kommersant reported.
The U.S. citizen denied the administrative offence of minor hooliganism and the use of obscene language in a public place. He was detained in Moscow, found guilty by a court and put in detention for 10 days, the paper said.
His lawyer denied the accusations that he swore, saying that he and his wife were in the kitchen of the apartment during the search. He lost an appeal.
The United States warns its citizens against all travel to Russia, citing an array of reasons, including “the potential for harassment and the singling out of U.S. citizens for detention by Russian government security officials” and the arbitrary enforcement of the law.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War when Moscow and Washington faced off over the deployment of nuclear weapons in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Almost no U.S. journalists now remain in Moscow. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in 2023 for spying. Paul Whelan, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was detained for spying in 2020. Both deny the charges.
A handful of U.S. citizens have been detained for more mundane offences.
U.S. Staff Sergeant Gordon Black was detained on May 2 by police in the Russian far eastern city of Vladivostok on suspicion of stealing from a woman he was in a relationship with.
Separately, a U.S. citizen named as William Russell Nycum, was given 10 days in jail for “petty hooliganism” earlier this month after he was found naked outside near a children’s library.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Christopher Cushing)
