#putlag

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A demonstration in Moscow in support of Russia's political prisoners.

27 October 2013

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In Russian prison

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New Russian video game takes aim at Pussy Riot

Members of the female punk band "Pussy Riot" (L-R) Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova sit in a glass-walled cage before a court hearing in Moscow October 10, 2012

A Russian Orthodox youth group unveiled a video game on Thursday that gives players a chance to "kill" members of the punk band Pussy Riot, whose profanity-laden protest in a Moscow cathedral last year angered the church and offended some believers.

Two women from Pussy Riot are serving two-year jail sentences for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for the "punk protest", which the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called part of a campaign to curb its post-Soviet revival.

"You have to kill them with a cross before they get into the church, That's the point," said Boris Yakemenko, who organised a Russian Orthodox youth festival in central Moscow where the video game was on display.

"It's revolting," Dmitry Litvinov, 22, said of the game as he got up from the table where it was displayed on a flat-screen TV.

A legal representative of Pussy Riot declined to comment on the video game. Neither members of the band nor Russian Orthodox Church officials could immediately be reached for comment.

Players use a mouse to move a cross over the screen and zap colourful cartoon representations of the women from Pussy Riot - each with a balaclava like those worn by the band members in their protest - as they try to enter a white church.

When one of the brightly coloured guitar-wielding band members gets there, a little red devil dances across the screen.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, Maria Alyokhina, 25, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were sentenced to two years in prison last August for bursting into Christ the Saviour Cathedral and belting out a song calling for the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Vladimir Putin.

Samutsevich was freed on appeal.

Maria Voskresenskaya, who drew the cartoon figures for the game, suggested the members of Pussy Riot had opened themselves up to such treatment through their actions.

"We have problems in the church, we don't deny it, but that doesn't justify the actions of those girls - they made a mistake," said Voskresenskaya, 24.

She declined to say who came up with the idea for the game, which she said took two weeks to create.

By Thomas Grove)

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Russia to issue verdict in dead lawyer's trial

Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky pictured on December 29, 2006 in Moscow. The tax evasion case against Magnitsky, who died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after accusing interior ministry officials of corruption, has been slammed by legal experts and Western governments

A Russian court is expected to convict a dead man on Thursday, completing the posthumous trial of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in detention led to one of the biggest Washington-Moscow rows in years.

The tax evasion case against Magnitsky, who died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after accusing interior ministry officials of corruption, has been slammed by legal experts and Western governments.

Judge Igor Alisov of the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow is expected at noon (0800 GMT) to pronounce the verdict in the case against Magnitsky and his former boss, US-born British citizen William Browder, the head of the Hermitage Capital investment fund who is being tried in absentia.

Magnitsky had accused interior ministry officials of organising a $235-million tax scam, but was then charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered.

He was placed under pre-trial detention in 2008 and died of untreated illnesses less than a year later at the age of 37.

Browder insists Magnitsky was tortured to death with beatings and the refusal of proper medical care.

A onetime supporter of President Vladimir Putin who headed an investment fund that was one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia, Browder has become a vocal critic of Russian authorities and has lobbied Western countries to sanction officials believed to be implicated in Magnitsky's death.

The US earlier this year passed the "Sergei Magnitsky Act" which imposed a visa ban and froze the assets of officials implicated in the lawyer's death.

The legislation infuriated Moscow, which in retaliation passed legislation prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children.

In April, Russia's justice and interior ministers met with staff included on the list, assuring them that they were in no danger of losing their jobs.

Western states have criticised the trial, with the US State Department saying Russia instead "ought to put its energy into investigating how he died".

Investigators closed the inquiry into the lawyer's death citing "lack of evidence" and last year, a court acquitted of negligence an official from the prison where Magnitsky was held.

Russia's Constitutional Court made it possible to try deceased people under a July 2011 ruling that allowed families of late defendants to push for their exoneration by the courts.

But Magnitsky's family, including his widow and mother, protested when prosecutors re-opened the case against him in August 2011. They have boycotted the trial and have asked the Moscow legal community to do the same.

The trial has gone ahead in a small courtroom since January despite only nominal participation of the two defence lawyers, Nikolai Gerasimov and Kirill Goncharov, who were appointed to the case by the judge at risk of disbarment.

Both have tried to distance themselves from the case, have repeatedly not shown up at the hearings, citing illness or other court engagements, and at one point asked the judge to remove them from the case, a request that was denied.

They were not available for comment.

Speaking to AFP ahead of Wednesday's hearing, Browder said he expected a guilty verdict.

"It will be proof that Putin is ready to misuse the courts and the entire Russian justice system to cover-up serious economic crimes and murder of his top officials."

A guilty verdict against Magnitsky would essentially deny him a chance to be exonerated.

Analysts say that Russia has pressed on with a case against a dead man to make a point.

"This trial is a gesture by Russia. Russia insists that it's not people on the list who are guilty, but Magnitsky and Browder," said Maria Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

"Since Browder is not facing the court and Magnitsky is dead, nothing can be proven, but that's not even needed," she said. "It's a gesture of resistance to the Magnitsky Act."

Browder said he would keep up his fight on behalf of the lawyer.

"On the day of Sergei Magnitsky's murder, I made a vow to his memory and his family that I would make sure that the people who killed him face justice, and I will not let this rest until they are all convicted and in jail."

By Maria Antonova

(Source: AFP)

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Russians linked to Sergei Magnitsky case banned from entering UK

The Home Office has barred 60 Russian nationals linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, above 

Mr Magnitsky, a lawyer who worked for London-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management, died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after accusing senior Russian police officers of organising a $230m (£153m) fraud in league with tax officials. He died after being beaten and denied medical treatment for pancreatitis.

The Home Office issued the bans after the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe published a list of the 60 officials in June last year, Telegraph.co.uk has learned.

The move is likely to prompt retaliation from the Kremlin, which banned American parents from adopting Russian children in reprisal agaisnt the US issuing visa bans and freezing the assets of some of the officials implicated in the case.

The Home Office’s barring of the Russian was contained in a previously unreported Parliamentary response in April to a written question from Dominic Raab.

Mr Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher & Walton, asked the Home Office if any of the 60 Russians had visited the UK in the last year.

He added: "I welcome this crucial first-step towards introducing a UK Magnitsky Act. Ministers have shown shown real mettle in doing the right thing. When we have credible evidence on those with blood on their hands for the most appalling crimes, they should not be free to breeze into Britain as if nothing had happened."

In response, Mark Harper, minister for immigration, replied: “The Home Office Special Cases Directorate is already aware of the individuals on the list and has taken the necessary measures to prevent them being issued visas for travel to the UK.”

The news comes four months after Mr Magnitsky’s widow, Natalya Zharikova, urged the Government to follow in the footsteps of the US by barring her husband’s abusers.

The US passed the Magnistky Act in December 2012, banning those officials deemed responsible for the lawyer’s death.

Mr Magnitsky had found that a criminal gang, aided by Russian police and tax officials, seized Hermitage’s Russian subsidiaries and created false claims to obtain a court decision that would allow all $230m of tax the hedge fund had paid to be rebated.

A Home Office spokesman declined to comment further. By James Quinn, and Philip Aldrick (Source: The Telegraph)

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Facing jail, protest leader Navalny condemns Putin's Russia

People pass by a banner, which is part of Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny's mayoral election campaign, in Moscow July 5, 2013. Photograph: REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin Protest leader Alexei Navalny said on Friday he would destroy the political system under President Vladimir Putin that was "sucking the blood out of Russia", after state prosecutors demanded he be jailed for six years on theft charges.

Navalny says the trial, in the industrial city of Kirov, is intended to sideline him as a potential rival to Putin. A six-year term would keep the anti-corruption campaigner in prison until after the next presidential election, scheduled for 2018.

Navalny, the most prominent opposition leader to be tried in post-Soviet Russia, denied the charge of stealing 16 million roubles (323,705 pounds) from a local timber firm that he was advising in 2009 while working for the liberal Kirov region governor.

He looked shocked and exchanged nervous smiles with his wife Yulia after Prosecutor Sergei Bogdanov set out the prosecution's demands at his trial in Kirov, 550 miles (900 km) northeast of Moscow. Judge Sergei Blinov will deliver a verdict on July 18.

Navalny, 37, later regained his composure and delivered an emotional denunciation of Russia's political system, saying the trial had been ordered from on high - a reference to Putin - and hatched in a world of "fantasy and fairy tales".

"I declare that my colleagues and I will do all we can to destroy this feudal system made in Russia, destroy this system of power, under which 83 percent of the country's wealth is in the hands of half a percent of the population," he told the court.

"Anyone who stands on the sidelines will just be helping the disgusting feudal system which sits like a spider in the Kremlin, the 100 families who are sucking the blood out of Russia."

Navalny helped organise the biggest anti-Putin protests since the former KGB spy rose to power in 2000. He has suggested the president ordered the trial to silence his criticism of what he calls a political class of "swindlers and thieves".

He says power has been concentrated in the hands of a few people, some of whom have become fabulously wealthy, largely by seizing control of raw materials or through corruption.

THORN IN PUTIN'S SIDE

His trial is seen by the opposition as the most significant in Russia since oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion after falling out with Putin. Khodorkovsky's $40-billion oil firm, Yukos, was broken up and sold off, mainly into state hands.

The Kremlin denies using the courts for political ends and says it does not interfere in criminal cases.

Tall and clean-cut, Navalny has been a thorn in the side of the government and Kremlin since starting to campaign online against state corruption in 2007.

He established himself as a powerful speaker at the anti-Putin demonstrations that flared in December 2011, although they have faded since Putin's presidential election victory in March 2012. Since then, Putin has reasserted his authority and several opposition leaders have been charged with criminal offences.

Other opposition figures say the trial is intended to prevent Navalny fulfilling his dream of becoming president and, before that, running for Moscow mayor in September.

"The absence of Navalny from the Moscow elections ... will mean elections in Russia have died once and for all and that there is no longer any chance of a peaceful, gradual change of the system," said fellow protest leader Grigory Chkhartishvili, a novelist who writes under the name of Boris Akunin.

Navalny acknowledged this year that he has presidential ambitions. Putin, 60, is eligible to seek a fourth presidential term in 2018, potentially extending his rule to nearly a quarter of a century, but has not said what his plans are.

Navalny is popular among Russia's growing middle class and urban youth, but it is unclear whether he has much support among the working class and in the provinces, Putin's power base.

The independent polling group Levada found last month only 3 percent of people would vote for him as Moscow mayor.

Bogdanov told Kirov's Leninsky district court that evidence presented during the trial "fully proves that Navalny ... committed a crime" and sought six years in jail for him and five years for an alleged accomplice, Pyotr Ofitserov.

Defence lawyer Olga Mikhailova said there was no evidence against Navalny and the trial was intended to discredit him.

By Gabriela Baczynska

(Source: Reuter)

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"Let my mother go" The letter of Gera to the Russians, 1.1 Write a letter to the prisoners of conscience http://amnesty.org.ru/pussyriot

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Leading human rights group evicted from Moscow office

A prominent Russian human rights group has been forcibly evicted from its office in Moscow after a stand-off with the city authorities over the lease.

Security guards removed veteran activist Lev Ponomarev and his For Human Rights group in a dramatic operation in the middle of the night.

Mr Ponomarev, 72, said later he had been beaten and kicked, and others had been assaulted too.

Non-governmental organisations have come under mounting pressure in Russia.

A law passed since Vladimir Putin was re-elected president last year obliges them to register as "foreign agents" if they receive any foreign funding, thereby stigmatising them in the eyes of many Russians.

Hundreds of NGOs in Russia have been raided in recent months.

Mr Ponomarev, a founding member of Russia's Memorial human rights organisation in the late 1980s, has publicly refused to register For Human Rights.

He suggested the eviction was linked to his group's stance and that it had paid its rent on the property, which it had occupied for 15 years, to the end of June.

However, Moscow city council said the lease had expired. "We simply evicted them because the Moscow government is not in the mood to have anyone freeload on its property," a spokesperson told AFP news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity.

'Dragged and kicked'

The stand-off in Maly Kislovky Alley, in the city centre, began on Friday afternoon when council bailiffs arrived at the office for the eviction.

As they sought to change the locks, Mr Ponomarev and his staff of six refused to leave, and he spoke to reporters through a window.

Several liberal opposition politicians joined him in a gesture of solidarity.

At around 02:00 on Saturday (22:00 GMT Friday), a large group of men stormed the office.

"They treated us very roughly," he told Reuters news agency by telephone. "I was dragged across the floor and then kicked."

He added that he and five others had been taken by ambulance to a first-aid clinic with bruises and scrapes, but none were in hospital.

Moscow police said they had kept order outside the office but had not taken part in the actual eviction, which was carried out by private security guards. Opposition politicians insisted police had been involved too.

A small group of protesters gathered outside the office on Saturday.

Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said the dispute should have been resolved through the courts.

(Source: BBC News Europe)