A court in Kabardino-Balkaria has acquitted lawyer Tsipinova again.

The Urvan District Court of Kabardino-Balkaria, which retried the case of lawyer Diana Tsipinova, again acquitted her of the charge of assaulting a police officer.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," the case of Kabardino-Balkaria lawyer Diana Tsipinova was retried in the Urvan District Court after the cassation court overturned her sentence. The defense presented evidence proving her innocence in assaulting a security officer. On October 30, the prosecution demanded a 2.5-year prison sentence for Tsipinova in a penal colony.

Diana Tsipinova's acquittal was announced today, December 1, her defense attorney, Nver Gasparyan, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "The so-called victim himself did not even appear in court to testify," he noted.

The lawyer refrained from commenting on the trial. "Regardless of the trial's outcome, the main thing is the result—she was acquitted," Gasparyan noted. Diana Tsipinova herself also declined to comment on her second consecutive acquittal.

Previously, the defense stated that a guilty verdict in Tsipinova's case would impact the entire legal community, as security forces could view it as permission to obstruct lawyers' work.

The "Caucasian Knot" reported that in May 2020, security forces detained lawyer Diana Tsipinova and her colleague Ratmir Zhilokov for 48 hours on suspicion of violence against police officers following a conflict in Nartkala. According to investigators, Ratmir Zhilokov behaved rudely toward police officers and physically assaulted one of them while attempting to prevent them from entering a gambling establishment.

Diana Tsipinova was among three lawyers who volunteered to provide legal assistance to Zhilokov after his arrest; they arrived at the police station and were unable to get access to Zhilokov for 40 minutes. Security forces didn't like being filmed, so they "overpowered the lawyers and threw them out of the building," reported Natalya Magova, who was present at the scene of the incident. Diana Tsipinova was brought into the building, handcuffed, and held until 7:00 a.m., she claims.

Investigators claim Tsipinova hit police officers while trying to get to the detained Zhilokov. In protest, Diana Tsipinova declared a hunger strike in the Baksan detention center. Dozens of colleagues from Kabardino-Balkaria and other regions spoke out in defense of Tsipinova and Zhilokov: they called the use of force against the lawyers by law enforcement and their subsequent criminal prosecution an extraordinary, though not isolated, incident. The investigation insisted on remanding Zhilokov and Tsipinova in custody, but the court rejected the motion. More than 50 of their colleagues came to the courthouse in Nalchik to support the lawyers, where the issue of pre-trial detention was being considered, according to a video report by the "Caucasian Knot" from May 31, 2020.