A press release on the website for the Krasnodarsky Krai Investigate Committee said on Sunday that Dymovsky was being released because investigators had finished looking into the allegations of fraud against him.

Dymovsky had been both fired and arrested shortly after posting two videos on YouTube in November addressed to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, detailing corruption in the Novorossiysk police department. His efforts triggered a slew of similar videos from police officers around the country. The official pretext for his arrest was a suspicion that Dymovsky appropriated 24 thousand rubles (about $800) from the Krasnodar police department, and he was placed in a local criminal investigative detention center (SIZO) on January 22. Dymovsky has categorically denied the charges, asserting that he has documents proving his innocence.

Authorities also said in late February that it was necessary to detain Dymovsky because he lacked a job and permanent residence.

“The decision to release Dymovsky from the SIZO is a good sign,” said Lev Ponomarev, prominent rights activist and head of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights. “We’re going to see to it that he remains free.”

“It would be good if the persecution of those who helped Dymovsky ended as well,” he added.

According to RIA Novy Region, Dymovsky said on Sunday evening that prison guards in the Krasnodar SIZO had illegaly detained him for five additional hours after he should have been released. “It was probably some small measure of revenge for the SIZO officers,” Dymovsky said.

The decision to arrest ex-Major Dymovsky, who gained notoriety after publishing two video clips on YouTube exposing corruption in the Russian police forces, was handed down on Friday by the Primorsky City Court.

Dymovsky had made a prediction an hour before the judicial session began on Friday that it would end with him being taken to the detention center.

In a video clip published on his website, the former major stated that during an interrogation for the fraud investigation, he had been handed a subpoena to appear in court at 1:45 pm on Friday, where a judge would decide whether or not he would be detained.

Dymovsky has been under criminal investigation by Krasnodar regional authorities since the end of 2009 for appropriating money that had been budgeted for operational expenses. “Supposedly, I wrote them off for five years. And appropriated 24 thousand [rubles],” approximately $800, Dymovsky told Gazeta.ru at the end of December. He added that had documents that proved his innocence and said that the case against him had been “ordered.”

In his video blog, Dymovsky said that the arrest did not scare him. “I’m always with you. I’m being cheerful, happy, regular. Good luck!” he said before leaving for court. A supporter of the ex-major said that during the judicial session, investigators asserted that Dymovsky must be under guard since he had threatened them. “But the witnesses were officers from the criminal investigation department of the Novorossiysk police who had worked with him. So these are people dependent on and intimidated by their superiors, and therefore gave all the evidence that the investigators needed immediately,” the supporter said.

According to Dymovsky, the intimidation he is being accused of could not possibly have occurred: on Thursday, after a scheduled interrogation, he went to Krasnodar for a meeting with his supporters, and did not return to Novorossiysk until close to midnight.

“But this didn’t convince the court,” said the supporter. “They loaded Aleksei into a police van with an escort of several cars…and took him to the detention center. His wife and I think that he’ll hold up, but we’re scared that today he’ll wind up in a ‘press-hut,'” a term for a special cell where prisoners are tortured by other prisoners with the intent of extracting a confession.

Dymovsky’s lawyers plan to contend that the detention is illegal. Protestors are planning on holding a demonstration outside of the Novorossiysk police headquarters and the Primorsky Regional Court on January 25 in his support.

Officials in the Krasnodar regional investigative bureau confirmed Dymovsky’s arrest, but refused to give any further commentary.

Novorossiysk Police Major Aleksei Dymovsky gained notoriety in November when he released two videos on YouTube detailing widespread corruption within the Novorossiysk regional police forces. He was promptly fired. After facing threats to his family’s safety, Dymovsky left for Moscow, where his initial press conference was attended by a record number of journalists. Authorities have launched a number of efforts to prosecute the former officer, accusing him of exposing state secrets and of fraud. His movement to reform the police system in Russia has gained support across the country, including from many other law enforcement agents.

Major Aleksei Dymovsky says he wore a mini-dictaphone beginning in spring 2009 to record evidence of document falsification, corruption, and other abuses by members of law enforcement in the southern city of Novorossiysk. He stated that he was ready to personally present these and other secret documents concerning the allegations to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

During the press conference, attended by a record number of journalists, the major elaborated on his claim that superior officers had forced him to illegally bring charges against an innocent person. He said that Novorossiysk Police Chief Vladimir Chernositov had a conflict with a local lieutenant colonel by the name of Slyshik, and that Dymovsky was forced to arrest Slyshik’s son for a nonexistent crime.

The major said that his actions in exposing police corruption had garnered support from officers all across Russia. He asserted that in order to begin reform of the country’s law enforcement agencies, a large-scale review that would include the participation of the public must be arranged. The main task, he said, would be to raise the prestige of police forces in the country.

Dymovsky, who had wanted to leave Novorossiysk for Moscow with his family out of concern for their safety, had initially attempted to travel to Moscow by plane. However, when he was detained en route to the airport and found that his bank accounts had been frozen, prohibiting him from buying a ticket, he decided to make the approximately one thousand mile trip by car.

In a third video posted Tuesday of a phone conversation with Police Chief Chernositov, Dymovsky asserted that “I will win” and that he was prepared to sit in jail for three years for the risk he had taken. He also promised to distribute his gathered evidence on the internet, “to show how we work.”

Major Aleksei Dymovsky was fired from the Novorossiysk police department after a two-day inquiry into claims he had made in two YouTube videos posted on November 5. The videos alleged that he and his colleagues were treated “like cattle” by their superiors, and were forced to bring charges of nonexistent crimes against people known to be innocent.

The Russian Interior Ministry accuses Dymovsky of receiving funding from abroad, which he vehemently denies, and says that he was undergoing a professional evaluation at the time he posted the videos.

The videos, which Major Aleksei Dymovsky posted in two separate parts on YouTube and his own website on November 5, detail alleged abuses of senior officers and poor working conditions for their subordinates. Gribakin stated that Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev had appointed an investigative unit to look into Dymovsky’s allegations and found that they did not correspond to reality. Additionally, Gribakin said, Dymovsky had slandered his fellow officers and “discredited his honor and dignity,” thus providing the basis for his dismissal.

Gribakin also said that the Interior Ministry will undertake an agency-wide check of the Novorossiysk police bureau and that Minister Nurgaliyev would report the findings to President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin.

A couple of days after posting the videos, which have now received more than two hundred thousand hits on YouTube, Dymovsky said that he fears for his safety and has been forced to hire a bodyguard. He believes that he is being followed and is making arrangements to send his family to Moscow for protection.

Dymovsky, who worked in a police department that fought illegal narcotic trafficking, made the videos to show the Prime Minister what he said was “the life of cops across Russia…the ignorance, the boorishness, the recklessness, where officers die because of their dim-witted bosses.” He said that senior officers treated their subordinates “like cattle,” and that officers worked without weekends, received extremely low salaries, and are demanded to investigate and arrest people for nonexistent crimes. “The Chief of City Police conferred me with the rank of major on receiving a promise from me to frame an innocent person,” Dymovsky says in the video.

Human rights advocates in Novorossiysk have expressed their readiness to defend the officer. They noted that despite everything Dymovsky had said, it was far from all that happens in the Novorossiysk police department. “It’s scarier yet; there just aren’t police officers who, like Aleksei Dymovsky, are ready to tell the truth about what is happening,” said Vadim Karastelev, director of the Novorossiysk Committee for Human Rights.

Police in Russia have long been accused of abuse and corruption. A recent study estimated that 1 in 25 people are tortured, beaten, or harassed by law enforcement officials in Russia each year. In a case last October, a human rights activist was beaten into a concussion and detained by police in St. Petersburg when he asked them for identification.