POLITZEKI

The pussy in the Russian bookshop “Falanster” is...

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:38:31 +0100

The pussy in the Russian bookshop “Falanster” is reading “Réflexions sur la violence” by George Sorel

The single mother who has become the face of Vladimir Putin's opposition

Sun, 05 May 2013 16:56:00 +0100

Ms Baronova rubbished the allegations against her Photo: Demotix

The 29-year-old single mother faces up to two years in jail in one of the first trials arising from a criminal investigation that has embroiled anti-Kremlin activists.

Twenty-four Russians face jail terms, some up to 10 years, and two have already been convicted. Investigators have also accused a Georgian parliamentarian with financing and organising the disorder.

Since his inauguration last year, Mr Putin has signed draconian laws, presided over a campaign against civil society groups and accused foreign powers of meddling in Russia’s matters. But activists say the centrepiece of the crackdown is the probe into the rally, known in Russia simply as the “Bolotnaya Affair,” a play on the Russian word “bolota” meaning “swamp.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph near the Stalin-era tower blocks that flank Moscow’s Novy Arbat, Ms Baronova rubbished the allegations against her, but says she expects her sentence to be suspended because of her six-year-old son Sasha.

“Russia is the kind of country where there’s a tragedy every week and nothing happens. Every year, we have a ‘trial of the century’,” she said referring to famous cases including the trials of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the three members of the “Pussy Riot” feminist punk band and now the Bolotnoe Affair.

^{From left: Pussy Riot members Yekaterina Samutsevic, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (EPA)}

“All these cases have their quirks, but the problem is no one is doing anything about it. Russia is slowly sinking into a swamp,”said Ms Baronova.

But if she does go to prison, she believes she will take something from the experience. “Imagine the experience – a free, state-paid excursion to Russian jail. You could write a great book about that! I’ve never been to a Russian jail. It’d be really interesting to see what it’s like,” she said.

Her path to activism was typical of Russia’s city-centred protesting classes. She attended her first demonstration in December 2011 when fraud at parliamentary elections drove thousands out onto the streets, ending an era of entrenched political cynicism that followed the calamities of 1990s Russia.

“We’ll be swallowed up and disappear,” she said. “We’ll get tired, we’ll be jailed and then be released. But new people will come in our places and they will succeed and that’s why it’s important to show people your example, to stand up for your civic position.”

Investigators say they have video evidence of Baronova at the scene calling on protesters to attack police. Baronova says the voice on the video sounds like hers, but denies the words are hers and said the video had been “edited.”

Investigators are tracking dozens of suspects and are still bringing new charges against activists.

Late last month, activist Alexei Gaskarov left his flat to buy cat food and was detained by police for questioning as a witness. Gaskarov joins 15 others being held in custody pending trial. Four are being held under house arrest and denied access to the outside world. Two have pleaded guilty and been convicted to four and half years and two and half years. The rest are not allowed to leave Moscow under their bail conditions.

By Tom Balmforth

(Source: The Telegraph)

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny goes on trial

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:23:54 +0100

One of Russia’s leading opposition figures, Alexei Navalny, has gone on trial for embezzlement.

Federal investigators in Moscow brought the charges over a timber deal in the Kirov region in which he was involved as an unofficial adviser in 2009.

The 36-year-old, known for his blogs denouncing President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party as crooks, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

After a short hearing, the judge adjourned the case for a week.

‘Fabricated’

Mr Navalny’s trial began at 09:10 local time (05:10 GMT) at the Leninsky court in the remote city of Kirov, 900km (550 miles) north-east of Moscow.

He is accused of involvement in the misappropriation of 16m roubles (£300,000; $500,000) from a timber firm he was advising in 2009 while working as an adviser to Kirov’s governor, Nikita Belykh.

Almost immediately, the defence asked the judge for the trial to be adjourned until next month, arguing that lawyers had not had enough time to prepare the case.

Mr Navalny is the most high-profile opposition figure to be tried since anti-Putin protests 16 months ago, which saw the biggest demonstrations in Moscow since the fall of the USSR.

Since Mr Putin’s re-election last March, legal action against opposition figures has increased markedly. Tough laws have been passed on public order offences and tight curbs placed on non-governmental organisations.

Dressed in a white shirt and jeans, Mr Navalny told the court he fully backed the proposal to adjourn the case, complaining that it was far from his home in Moscow.

The judge agreed to an adjournment but said the trial would resume on 24 April.

Mr Navalny has accused Mr Putin of personally ordering the case against him and has called the charges “absurd”.

In a recent interview with the BBC’s Daniel Sandford, Mr Navalny said the charges were “blatantly fabricated”.

But he said it was important for the Kremlin to bring this case against him in order to try to discredit him.

“If you put an anti-corruption activist into prison for participating in a political protest, it will only help his publicity. But if you say that he is corrupt…”

Analysts say his conviction would be a major blow to an opposition which for years suffered the lack of a central figure or platform.

Distancing Mr Putin from the case, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the leader would not be following it.

(Source: BBC News)

Russia puts Hermitage boss Bill Browder on wanted list

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:47:28 +0100

The Russian Interior Ministry is seeking an arrest warrant for the British hedge fund boss Bill Browder in a move that will escalate tension between Moscow and America and the UK.

Mr Browder’s company, Hermitage Capital Management, said it had received notice that a Moscow court had been asked to issue a warrant for his arrest “in absentia” for tax evasion. The fund manager is accused of “stealing” shares in Gazprom more than a decade ago and “interfering” with the energy giant’s strategic policies.

However, in an embarrassing twist, the Moscow court judged refused to issue the warrant saying Mr Browder had not been given enough warning. Hermitage said the court will review the request again in a week’s time. It is only the second time Moscow has sought to put a westerner on the international wanted list; the first was a Spanish national embroiled in the Yukos case.

The latest development, which will be seen as an aggressive attack of the Russian state on business, has been condemned as “politically-directed abuse of justice” by Hermitage.

The claim against Mr Browder has been separated from the Interior Ministry’s case against his former employee, Sergei Magnitsky who is currently the subject of the first ever posthumous trial in Russian history.

In a statement today, Hermitage, which was one of the biggest investors in Russia, said that the warrant “follows a coordinated Russian state propaganda campaign in the last three months, where all Kremlin (Hamburg: KMLK.HM - news) -controlled TV channels, including NTV, Rossiya, and 1TV ran slanderous programs accusing Mr Browder of murders, stealing IMF money in 1998, causing the Russian default, stealing Gazprom shares, and being a UK spy.”

A Hermitage spokesman added: “President Putin treats the law and the truth like a child in a sandbox. There are no rules. There is no law, and he thinks he can do whatever he wants. This may be true in Russia, but it is not true elsewhere in the world.”

Mr Browder, an American-born British citizen, has campaigned for justice for Mr Magnitsky who died in prison where he was detained on controversial charges for a year. The fund manager has been accused of illegally buying shares in Gazprom in contravention of a presidential decree in 1997 which imposed restrictions on foreigners owning the shares.

Hermitage maintains that “the case itself has no legal prospect because there were never any criminal sanctions for owning Gazprom shares.”

Hermitage said: “The Russian Interior Ministry alleges that Hermitage purchased Gazprom shares in order to “interfere” in Gazprom’s policies, gain information on its activities, get elected to the board, and influence the company.

“Indeed, we tried to influence the company so that Gazprom management stopped stealing billions of dollars worth of assets and cash flow. It is amazing that the Russian government never wanted to stop the stealing itself.”

Mr Browder was banned from Russia in 2006. The high-profile case has led to a strain in diplomatic relations between America and Russia. In 2011 Hilary Clinton sanctioned a visa ban for 60 senior Russian officials who Mr Browder had linked to Mr Magnitsky’s death. President Putin signed a law banning Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

Last month Mr Browder said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “has given an instruction to law enforcement agencies to charge me with any crime they can think up, no matter how spurious or absurd.”

By Loise Armitstead

(Source: The Telegraph)

US risks angering Russia by publishing blacklist

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:22:33 +0100

Washington risked reopening a diplomatic rift with Moscow following the publication of a blacklist of Russian officials who are banned from the United States because of their alleged involvement in the death in custody of the whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Earlier in the day Moscow had warned that any decision to go ahead and release the list could damage relations between the two countries. Washington passed legislation banning the officials in December but had so far put off making the list public until now.

According to the list released last night on the Treasury’s website there are 18 officials who have been named. It was compiled in the wake of the arrest and death in custody of Mr Magnitsky, a father of two and Moscow-based lawyer who helped expose a multi-million dollar tax scam that was allegedly carried out by criminal underworld figures allied with Russian officials and police officers.

Among those included on the blacklist is Pavel Karpov, a former interior ministry police officer who is currently suing William Browder in the UK courts for libel. Mr Browder, a millionaire hedge fund manager and staunch critic of official corruption inside Russia, employed Mr Magnitsky to uncover a $230million tax scam against a series of subsidiaries that were once owned by his company Hermitage capital.

After publicly naming a number of officials Mr Magnistky was arrested for tax evasion and died nine months later in prison. His family, rights groups and Russian’s own human rights investigation body say there was evidence he was beaten in custody and denied vital medication.

Mr Browder has named Mr Karpov as one of the officials behind the scam. However the former detective has vehemently denied any involvement and has launched a libel case against him in the High Court.

Other Russian police officers named on the American list include Mr Karpov’s once bosses Artem Kuznetsov and Oleg Silchenko – both of whom have also denied involvement in the scam.

Olga Stepanova, a former tax official, is also named on the list. Her department was one of two Moscow tax offices who signed off on a fraudulent tax rebate in just 24 hours on Christmas Eve 2008. With the help Alexander Perepilichnyy, another whistle blower, Mr Browder’s investigators helped uncover how Mrs Stepanova and her divorcee husband have become exceptionally wealthy in the wake of the scam. The Stepanovs, however, insist that their money was gleaned through entirely legitimate means.

Mr Perepilichnyy, who was helping Swiss investigators uncover how much of the money was fraudulently laundered, was found dead outside his Surrey home in yet to be explained circumstances.

Russia has long promised that any blacklist from the US side would be met with a tit-for-tat list of US citizens to be banned from Russia

“We have said many times that this is all extremely destructive for bilateral relations, and we would never have initiated anything similar, we have enough problems in our relations as it is,” the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday. “But given that the American side, both the administration and Congress, have decided to take a different path, we don’t have any option but to respond. Mr Ryabkov said that the response would be “equal and balanced”.

These are likely to include people allegedly implicated in the human rights abuses of Russian citizens, such as the US agents who arrested Viktor Bout on charges of weapons smuggling, as well as other officials responsible for CIA secret prisons and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. However, banning US officials from Russia does not quite have the same resonance as a ban on US property and assets for Russian officials, many of whom have stashed money abroad in recent years. Aware of this, Moscow also introduced a ban on the adoption of Russian children by US citizens, a move that produced outcry among the liberal opposition as well as many ordinary Russians.

By Jerome Taylor and Shaun Walker

(Source: The Independent)

Amnesty action around Putin’s visit to the Netherlands

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:17:14 +0100

Amnesty action around Putin’s visit to the Netherlands

Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to continue activism

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:08:00 +0100

Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot in a glass-walled cage in a Moscow court in October last year. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

A member of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot has vowed to continue her work as a political artist in her first interview with the western media since being sent to prison eight months ago.

Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova, 23, sounded defiant in the 15-minute telephone interview from her prison colony in Mordovia, a central Russian region infamous for its high number of prison camps. She has been at the distant women’s penal colony since October, serving the remainder of a two-year sentence on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.

Tolokonnikova and two other members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were found guilty in August last year after they performed a song criticising Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox church in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Samutsevich was later given a suspended sentence.

In a phonecall monitored by prison officials, who repeatedly interrupted the conversation in order to prevent Tolokonnikova from talking about politics, the Pussy Riot founder said she had no hope that Putin’s government would release her early.

A court in Mordovia is due to hold a parole hearing in Tolokonnikova’s case on 26 April. Although the interview was held one day after the parole hearing date was set, Tolokonnikova, who has been kept largely in an information vacuum, said she had not heard the news.

“For me, the parole hearing means nothing,” she said. “In our case, the government wants us to recognise our guilt, which of course we won’t do,” Tolokonnikova said. “I submitted the parole documents to show that they cannot break a person.”

Pussy Riot’s supporters have accused Putin of orchestrating the case against them. The women carried out their 40-second cathedral performance in the runup to a contested March presidential election that brought Putin back to the Kremlin. The highly publicised trial against them signalled the start of a sweeping crackdown on the opposition.

Tolokonnikova has also continued to appeal against her guilty verdict through the Moscow court system, and is one step away from it reaching the country’s pliant supreme court. Late on Sunday, a leading judge in the Moscow appeals court denied that the case against the women of Pussy Riot was political. “We don’t hear political cases,” Olga Yegorova said in an interview with state-run NTV television. “It is in my power to lessen their sentence – it’s not excluded that that will happen.”

The case against Pussy Riot, conducted at lightning speed and rife with procedural abnormalities, highlighted the politicised nature of Russia’s court system. Their guilty verdict sent a warning signal to the largely young and urban opposition, while the state’s representation of Pussy Riot’s performance as an attack on the church pandered to the post-Soviet growth in religious sentiment in the Russian heartland.

The next political trial due to shake the nation is that of the opposition leader Alexey Navalny, whose trial is set to start in the city of Kirov, 500 miles from Moscow, on 17 April. He has been charged with embezzlement in a case he believes has been designed to silence him.

Before being cut off by a prison official, Tolokonnikova said: “I hope they don’t have the impudence to jail him – because, after all, he is even more of a media figure among the people than the members of Pussy Riot, at least in Russia.

“I’m very happy he exists, as I’m happy that any political activist exists, especially someone who is willing to spend all his time and energy to change the political situation in Russia,” she said.

Tolokonnikova spends her days adhering to a strict prison regimen dominated by work in the colony’s factory, sewing uniforms for various Russian officials. She said she felt fine and that “it could be worse”. She takes medicine daily for persistent headaches.

Asked if she had begun to think about life after prison, Tolokonnikova said: “My life isn’t going to change – there will be new key components because of the experience I’ve gathered here. The vectors of politics and art will continue the same.”

The prison routine leaves her little free time. Whatever time she gets goes towards reading books and the many letters from supporters delivered to her twice a week. Any information from the outside world comes from the newspapers and magazines that her relatives bring her during visits.

“I try to use all my time constructively – productively, creatively. I’m trying to learn how to relate to all this with interest, and I think I am achieving it,” she said. “If your mood is bad, then time goes slow. If you learn to live paying attention to life and valuing it, even here, then time isn’t lost.

“That’s my main task: to make it so that the time they tried to take from me isn’t lost. And I think I am successful.”

By Miriam Elder

(Source: The Guardian)

Vladimir Putin topless protest: Femen activist speaks out

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:14:11 +0100

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are confronted by a topless demonstrator during a tour of the Hanover Fair, Hanover Photo: EPA/JOCHEN LUEBKE

Alexandra Shevchenko, who stripped to the waist in front of the Russian president as he toured a trade fair in Hanover alongside German chancellor Angela Merkel, told The Daily Telegraph that he was “really stupid”.

Mr Putin claimed to have been entertained by the demonstration, telling a press conference afterwards: “As for the protest, I liked it.”

Speaking in Berlin today, Ms Shevchenko, 24, said: “Putin is a bastard. If you’re a normal person you have to be against him. The most important [criticism] for us is human rights, the rights of women, this situation with Pussy Riot. Of course we don’t want to say this is all he’s done – he has committed a lot of other crimes.

“I think his answer was really stupid. It was really in this Russian, post-USSR style. The president of a European country would never say something like – I like her, in such a sexual way. He does it because he’s a stupid man.”

Ms Shevchenko was one of a group of five female protesters who confronted the two world leaders on Monday morning. She had a slogan in Cyrillic on her back, reading: “Fuck you Putin” – which she chose, she says, “because it’s really simple”.

The women have been released by the police, while authorities in Germany decide whether they will face charges.

The women are members of Femen, the feminist group who have become famous for semi-naked protests, including burning a Salafist flag in front of the Grand Mosque in Paris.

Ms Shevchenko, who studied business administration, helped found the group in Ukraine in 2006 to campaign against the sex industry. The group has been protesting topless since 2010 - and, she said, the group will soon be establishing itself in the UK.

Describing the moment she rushed towards Mr Putin, Ms Shevchenko said: “There was a lot of his security and a lot of police around him, a lot of journalists. So we have to find some gaps and just jump through them.

“When I was running at him we were looking at each other’s eyes. He was very, very surprised and thinking in this moment, thinking he will do something with his security. It is their mistake.”

Mr Putin attempted to laugh off the incident later, saying that the organisers of the Hanover event should “say thank you to the Ukrainian girls, they helped you promote the trade fair”.

He added: “To be honest, I didn’t really hear what they were shouting because the security [guards] were very tough. These huge guys fell on the lasses. That seemed not right to me, they could have been handled more gently.”

“Topless protest – I think this is the only effect that can work,” Ms Shevchenko said. “This way of protest is being used by women all over the world. In new countries, in Mexico, in the US, in Brazil, France and Germany.

“When a woman’s nudity is not controlled by men, when she’s not using it to entertain men, or to give them sexual satisfaction or advertise men’s products – when she’s using her sexuality for her own aims, political aims – that really makes patriarchy irritated. And you can see the result.”

That result, according to Ms Shevchenko, has been regular threats of violence against Femen activists. She cited the recent fatwa against the activist in Tunisia who posted a topless image of herself online, and the abduction of a group of activists by secret service agents in Belarus.

Femen claim that three activists who travelled to Minsk, in Belarus, were kidnapped and held naked in a forest overnight. While there, they were threatened with lighters and knives. The Belarus secret service denies the allegations.

Ms Shevchenko has been in Germany since the end of January establishing a local chapter of the movement. She said that it had begun activities in Britain too.

She said that Femen lacked the media profile to attract many new supporters in the UK, while bail conditions imposed by the courts made activism difficult.

“There is a little bit less information about Femen in the UK, less than in Germany, France, it’s not so easy for women [in Britain] to understand who we are and start to become Femen. And when we talk to all these activists, activists from the UK, we’re really shocked that after all the protests, they have this punishment, that they cannot participate in other protests.”

Mr Putin was in Hanover to open the trade fair, where Russia has a pavilion, and hold talks with Mrs Merkel.

After visiting Germany, he travelled to the Netherlands, where he faced protests from gay rights activists, who blew whistles and played loud dance music outside his meeting with the Dutch prime minister.

The activists accuse Russia of discriminating against homosexuals. Russia’s parliament has given preliminary approval to a ban on “homosexual propaganda” targeting minors.

By Jeevan Vasagar

(Source: The Telegraoh)

Russian court announces trial of opposition leader Alexey Navalny

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:23:19 +0100

As a popular internet activist and one of Putin’s loudest critics, many believe the case is targeted at silencing Alexey Navalny. Photograph: Max Avdeev

A provincial Russian court has announced that it will launch the trial of Alexey Navalny on 17 April, in a case widely believed to be targeted at silencing the popular opposition leader.

The case against Navalny, one of the loudest critics of Vladimir Putin, threatens to revive the tensions that swept Moscow last year, as tens of thousands took to the streets of Moscow to protest against the powerful president’s longtime reign. Navalny helped organise those protests and continues to attack Putin and his supporters via investigations into corruption posted on his popular blog.

Die-hard supporters have promised to reach Kirov, a city around 500 miles northeast of Moscow that is infamous as a site of Tsarist-era exile, to attend the trial.

Navalny, 36, has been charged with stealing 10,000 cubic metres of timber and causing a 16m rouble (£335.5m) loss to the regional Kirov government while acting as an advisor to its liberal governor in 2009. Navalny, who has built his reputation on battling corruption, has vehemently denied the charges. He faces up to 10 years in jail.

“It’s absolutely clear that this is politically motivated,” said his lawyer, Olga Mikhailova. “He did nothing illegal – and there is not one piece of evidence to conflict with this point of view.”

Navalny and his supporters argue that the case has been concocted in order to pressure him into ceasing his campaign against Putin’s government. “The criminal case against Navalny has been entirely fabricated by employees of Russia’s Investigative Committee, on the order of Vladimir Putin,” reads a banner on a website Navalny launched to present his side of the story.

Navalny has already served two 15-day jail sentences for taking part in the anti-Putin protests. His home, as well as the homes of his relatives and associates, have been raided by masked Russian agents. His brother was charged with fraud in December, presented by government critics as a further means of putting pressure on the popular opposition activist.

Navalny has only redoubled his efforts, publishing corruption investigations into top Duma deputies and continuing his acerbic attacks on Putin.

He has now been swept up in the Kremlin’s ruthless crackdown, launched shortly after Putin returned to the presidency last May. Dozens of protest-goers are awaiting trial for participating in a 6 May demonstration that turned violent, two members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot are serving two year jail sentences, and Russia’s human rights community has been targeted in a series of raids over the past few weeks.

“There is no doubt that it will be a guilty verdict,” Navalny said in remarks posted on the site pertaining to the case.

The conviction rate in Russia’s courts is nearly 100% – once a case is launched, a guilty verdict is almost inevitable, unless the case is thrown out. Holding the trial in Kirov, far from Moscow, will likely lessen daily media attention.

By Miriam Elder

(Source: The Guardian)

Berezovsky's girlfriend casts doubt on suicide

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:26:48 +0100

Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The 23-year-old girlfriend of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky said on Monday she did not believe he had killed himself and that they had been planning to go to Israel on holiday together days after he was found dead.

Katerina Sabirova said in a magazine interview she did not believe Berezovsky, 67, whom she first met in 2008, would have killed himself, and that in their last conversation a day before his death, his voice “had sounded better than usual.”

Berezovsky was found on March 23 in the bathroom of a mansion outside London and a postmortem found that he had been hanged and no evidence of a struggle.

“He was definitely planning to come to Israel on Monday (March 25). I know that for sure,” she told the liberal weekly New Times, and showed a printout of her air ticket to Tel Aviv.

“He had big plans” of going to the Dead Sea, she said, adding that he had been down but that she had not believed he was suicidal.

Berezovsky “used to say: ‘Imagine if I’m not around, all the problems will go away,’ but this wasn’t a guide to action, I could not and cannot imagine that he could do this. It’s very hard to believe this,” Sabirova said.

Berezovsky was due to meet her at Tel Aviv airport’s VIP lounge, after flying out with his bodyguard Avi, she said. He had proposed the trip on March 18, choosing Israel because Sabirova’s British visa had run out.

The magazine printed a photograph of Sabirova with Berezovsky, his arm around her shoulder. Friends of Berezovsky confirmed that they were in a long-term relationship, it said.

When she came to a Moscow restaurant for the interview, “heads turned,” the magazine wrote.

Sabirova also confirmed that Berezovsky had discussed with her his letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for forgiveness, whose existence was revealed after the oligarch’s death by Putin’s spokesman.

“He said that he did not see another way (to return to Russia) than to bow down,” she said, adding that she saw a draft and inferred that Berezovsky sent it in November but there had been no answer.

Alexander Goldfarb, a close associate of Berezovsky, wrote on his Snob.ru blog, that the businessman would have been likely to confide in Sabirova.

“It’s true that Katya Sabirova was dating Boris, and this relationship was close and trusting enough for him to have shared his plans for such a letter, if he planned to write it,” he said.

“I was in touch with Katya in the last days and I think she told the truth in her New Times interview.”

Friends of Berezovsky concurred that he had been extremely depressed after losing a multi-million-pound court battle against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, last year.

Sabirova said she last met Berezovsky in November after his court defeat, when she brought him Chinese herbal medicine cures from Moscow to help him sleep.

“He smoked a lot — he didn’t drink but he smoked, sometimes several packs a day. He ate very little. By our last meeting, he had lost a lot of weight,” she said.

Berezovsky, who made his fortune in the post-Soviet 1990s before quarrelling with Putin and gaining asylum in Britain, had a complicated love life. He was married twice and had six children by three different women.

In 2011 he agreed to pay a record-breaking divorce settlement to his second wife, Galina Besharova, set by a British court, even though they had not lived together for more than a decade.

His former long-term partner Elena Gorbunova last year went to a British court to freeze some of his assets to prevent him selling them to settle his debts.

(Source: AFP)

Apathy and stagnation. Nadezda Tolokonnikova about infinity of a women's prison.

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0000

Kasparov.Ru edition continues to publish correspondence with political prisoners in Russia. We received a letter from the member punk band Pussy Riot Nadezda Tolokonnikova on her life in prison.

My imprisonment, my female colony - is lethargy, it is a dream. It is infinity, and it seems that all life has past by here, at the same time it is one still moment, a day that by the will of some evil genius, has to go on and be repeated again and again, until death do us part. My imprisonment - the flip side of the material matrix, hundreds of lined-up bodies - weak, pale and speechless, hundreds of physical existences, wrapped in mucus that returns as the same mucus of apathy and stagnation.

Being in the heart of that day, in the depths of it, it is useless to try to talk about it - only muffled gurgle comes out from the mouth. As James Cameron [film director] had to emerge up from the ocean basins to translate what he saw in Avatar, and so I must leave my endless abyss of the day and go to the surface again as in the old days before March of 2012, to be a human truly wise and, therefore, creative.

Of all the feelings [I have] the strongest one is the oppressed and endless longing for justice and understanding.

Most of all I care about old like the world itself question, “How could I ever be happy, knowing how much of evil and injustice has done [to this world]?” People, who support me, write, “Remember, this all will be over, and you will return to a happy life.” But could you be happy after seeing of what I have seen? I know this anxiety, restlessness and despair but an endless search for the truth will never leave me.

I know that life of people, who was cultured same way as me, is doomed to misfortune according to common concepts. But there is, perhaps, more happiness, happiness of an idealist incapable of serene conformity. To such tough happiness, and my two years in prison are part of it, I am ready.

I do believe, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” [Matthew 5:6 ]

By Nadezda Tolokonnikova

(Source: Kasparov.ru)

Boris Berezovsky 'found with ligature around his neck'

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:00:37 +0000

An inquest into the death of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has heard he was found lying on his bathroom floor with a “ligature around his neck”.

Mr Berezovsky, 67, was discovered at his Berkshire home on Saturday.

A post-mortem examination found his death was consistent with hanging, but further tests are being carried out and are likely to take several weeks.

The inquest, which has been adjourned, comes after relatives of his second wife described him as “extraordinary”.

Speaking at the opening of the inquest at Windsor Coroner’s Court, Detective Inspector Mark Bissell, of Thames Valley Police, said Mr Berezovsky was found lying on his bathroom floor with a “ligature around his neck and a piece of similar material on the shower rail above him”.

The inquest was opened and adjourned by Berkshire Coroner Peter Bedford.

Janine Prunty, the coroner’s officer, confirmed Mr Berezovsky’s daughter, Elizaveta Berezovskaya, formally identified the body.

And police confirmed the ambulance crew found the Russian oligarch’s body on the floor at his home in Ascot, Berkshire.

The BBC’s world affairs correspondent Richard Galpin said the police search of Mr Berezovsky’s house will continue for a few days more and other tests are under way.

Following her father’s death, Mr Berezovsky’s daughter Anastasia, 19, said: “My father was not the typical parent, nothing about him was ordinary… he has taught me many things about this world.

“He has taught me to never stop fighting for what one believes in no matter what the costs may be.”

Anastasia and her brother Artem are Mr Berezovsky’s children with his second wife Galina Besharova.

She added: “There aren’t enough words in any language that can somehow express everything that he was and everything he will continue to be. The only word that comes close is extraordinary.”

‘No struggle’

Early reports suggested Mr Berezovsky’s body was found by an employee, who called an ambulance at 15:18 GMT on Saturday. He had not been seen since around 22:30 GMT the previous evening.

Police have said the post-mortem examination found nothing to indicate a violent struggle.

They had earlier said there was no evidence so far that a “third party” was involved.

It will be several weeks before the results of further tests, including toxicology and histology examinations, are known.

Our correspondent says some friends of Mr Berezovsky had said he was depressed after the failure of his legal battle in London with fellow Russian oligarch and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich.

But others have insisted he was not a man who would have taken his own life, our correspondent adds.

Mr Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, amassed a fortune in the 1990s following the privatisation of state assets after the collapse of Soviet communism.

He survived numerous assassination attempts, including a bomb that decapitated his chauffeur.

Mr Berezovsky had been living in the UK since 2000. He was granted political asylum in 2003 on the grounds that his life would be in danger in Russia.

(Source: BBC News)

The death of Berezovsky, by Jacques Louis David

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:51:31 +0000

The death of Berezovsky, by Jacques Louis David

STRATEGY-31Demonstration supporting Russian political prisoners...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 12:05:48 +0000

STRATEGY-31
Demonstration supporting Russian political prisoners on 31st March, from 3 till 4 pm, opposite the Russian Consulate at Bayswater Road, London

Event in Facebook

Prison refuses to support Pussy Riot Tolokonnikova's parole bid

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:14:00 +0000

A commission that assesses prison inmate behavior has decided against supporting Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s bid for parole, chairman of Mordovia’s public monitoring committee Gennady Morozov told RIA Novosti.

Tolokonnikova is serving a two year prison sentence in Mordovia for the band’s “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.

The commission is declining to support Tolokonnikova’s parole application because of prison rule violations and because she has shown no remorse. The prison’s stand will be forwarded to the court, which will rule on the band member’s parole application.

On March 7, Morozov said that the disciplinary commission had decided against penalizing Tolokonnikova. A review of her behavior began after guards claimed she went to the medical ward without permission.

Earlier, Tolokonnikova’s lawyer, Irina Khrunova, announced that her client would be applying for parole. The application has already been sent to the Zubovo-Polyansky Court in Mordovia.

Khrunova told Kommersant newspaper that the application includes positive character references from the management of Tolokonnikova’s residential block and from the prison, and that she has not been involved in any conflicts with prison officials or inmates.

“Furthermore, she has a young child, she is socially integrated and has been offered employment outside prison,” Khrunova said.
In accordance with Russian legislation, convicts can apply for parole after serving half of their sentence. Tolokonnikova’s sentence includes her detention before and during the trial.

Kommersant wrote earlier that the Moscow City Court’s Presidium had received the parole application from the Pussy Riot defense team. Human rights commissioner Vladimir Lukin supports the parole effort.

In late February 2012, five young women wearing brightly colored balaclavas staged a “punk-style” prayer in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. An edited video of their performance was posted on the Internet and caused a public outcry.

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were arrested shortly thereafter. On August 17, 2012, the Khamovniki District Court sentenced them to two years in a prison settlement for hooliganism.

On October 10, 2012, the Moscow City Court converted Samutsevich’s verdict to a suspended sentence and released her immediately, based on her new attorneys’ argument that she was seized by security guards prior to reaching the altar and therefore did not actually take part in the punk prayer performance.

Alyokhina’s and Tolokonnikova’s sentences were upheld.

(Source: RAPSI)

Russian police detain several Pussy Riot supporters

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:58:00 +0000

Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Russian police detained several activists protesting on Friday against the incarceration of the punk rockers Pussy Riot in a demonstration timed to take place on International Women’s Day.

The street-art collective Voina (War) said on its blog that around 10 people were taken away by the riot police at a small demonstration in support of Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, the jailed band members.

Moscow police told Reuters that people had been detained, but declined to say how many. A Reuters Television cameraman saw four people led away to police cars.

The protest was designed as a one-person demonstration for which no permit is required. Activists took turns in front of the Federal Penitentiary Service building holding posters demanding freedom for Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova.

All the band members, including the since freed Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, belonged to Voina.

Russian media reported that the arrests were made when other people started holding up posters.

Voina said that after the detentions the police allowed the one-person demonstration to continue.

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are serving two-year sentences after being convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred when performing an anti-Kremlin “prayer” early last year at Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Samutsevich was released in October after her lawyer argued that she had not taken part in the performance because she was seized by guards before she could start playing her guitar.

Alyokhina has been refused early release and Tolokonnikova has just requested one, Russian media reported. When asked on Thursday whether the two should be paroled, President Vladimir Putin declined to comment.

“It’s not up to me, but it is a thing of procedures and applicable legislation,” Putin said, according to Russian media.

He said he does not remember commenting about the Pussy Riot case before.

“I don’t remember, perhaps I commented, but today I don’t want to,” he said.

In October, Putin called the Pussy Riot sentencing fair. “They wanted this, they got it,” he told the NTV television channel in an interview then.

On Friday, another one-person demonstration was organised by mothers, wives, sisters, and female friends of opposition members jailed after the protests on the eve of Putin’s inauguration in May. No detentions were reported.

Reporting by Gennady Novik

Writing by Lidia Kelly

Editing by Michael Roddy

(Source: Reuters)

Pussy Riot member seeks parole to spend time with daughter

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:40:00 +0000

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Photograph: AFP/GETTY

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the jailed Pussy Riot members, serving a two-year sentence in a Russian prison camp, has asked to be released on parole, according to reports, to spend more time with her daughter.

Tolokonnikova, 23, has asked a regional court that she be released on parole on several grounds, including the fact that she has a five-year-old daughter, lawyer Irina Khrunova told the Kommersant daily.

The prisoner “has every reason to be released soon,” Ms Khrunova said, saying Tolokonnikova had good character references, did not have conflicts in the prison camp, and had received job offers she could take up on her release.

The court is not due to hold a hearing on her parole request until April at the earliest, Ms Khrunova said.

Under Russian law prisoners are eligible for parole when they have served half their sentences.

Tolokonnikova, a philosophy student, was sent to prison camp in October along with bandmate Maria Alyokhina, after being convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for singing a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral protesting President Vladimir Putin’s close links with the Russian Orthodox Church.

The women have been in custody since first being detained in March 2012, several weeks after the February cathedral protest.

A third bandmate, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released with a suspended sentence because of her peripheral role in the performance.

The other jailed woman, Maria Alyokhina, 24, was recently refused a request to postpone her sentence until her five-year-old son becomes a teenager.

She also has received two reprimands, which would affect her chances of parole, but nevertheless plans to petition for one next week, Khrunova said.

Supporters of Pussy Riot plan to hold a series of one-person pickets outside the prison service in Moscow on Friday, which is International Women’s Day.

(Source: The Telegraph)

Russia: The Logic Of Putting A Corpse On Trial

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:27:00 +0000

The posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky must make sense to someone senior here - the will of the Russian courts tends not to stray far from that of those in power.

The official narrative is that Mr Magnitsky was being investigated for tax fraud at the time of his death, death is not a bar to prosecution in Russia, and in the interests of justice the case should continue.

To the rest of the world it looks like they are putting a corpse on trial.

This case perhaps perfectly illustrates the apparent disconnect in thinking between those inside the Kremlin and the international community.

To understand the logic on the Russian side, you need to understand the background.

Mr Magnitsky was a Moscow lawyer hired to work on the account of British-based investment fund Hermitage Capital.

In 2008 he believed he had uncovered a massive tax fraud, organised by senior police and tax officials, targeting Hermitage and the Russian state.

It was as much an alleged crime against the Russian taxpayer as it was against his company.

But instead of being commended, he was locked up, held for almost a year in increasingly squalid conditions, and denied medical treatment.

He was found dead on his 358th day in custody, having repeatedly refused to withdraw his allegations.

Mr Magnitsky was not a human rights activist, he was not a campaigner, he was a lawyer - and so he documented, in detailed, dispassionate notes, what was happening to him, and his rapidly deteriorating health.

He had faith that justice would eventually be done.

No-one in Russia has been convicted over his death, but his former colleagues have compiled a dossier of evidence against those they believe were responsible.

Late last year the US passed a law banning all those suspected of involvement with his death (and others suspected of serious human rights abuses) from travelling to, or holding assets in the States, and his supporters are campaigning for a similar law in the EU.

Russia’s elite hates this. First, they see it as meddling in their domestic affairs and being preached at, second, they don’t want any other countries following America’s lead and imposing similar sanctions.

The Duma retaliated in December with a ban on American citizens adopting Russian children, named after a young Russian boy who died whilst in the care of his American adoptive parents.

The message is not subtle - that America is capable of human rights abuses too - and every case of suspected child abuse or neglect in the US is currently getting primetime billing on state-controlled nightly TV news here.

The conviction of Sergei Magnitsky (and let’s face it, no-one expects an acquittal) is the next ‘logical’ step - it enables them to say, look, he is not a human rights hero - he is a convicted fraudster.

And to get there they need to prosecute him, even if they have to do it posthumously.

There is provision under Russian law to continue a case after death, but only at the request of the relatives - if they choose to try to clear the defendant’s name.

That is categorically not the case here - Mr Magnitsky’s widow and mother have repeatedly written to the court stating their opposition to this trial and pleading with them to stop it, but the court has simply assigned a defence team to represent Mr Magnitsky and the case is going ahead.

Critics of this trial have pointed out that even at the height of Stalin’s show trials, at least the defendants were alive.

Amnesty has condemned the case as a sinister new chapter in Russia’s record on human rights, and a complete denial of, not least, Mr Magnitsky’s fundamental right to defend himself in person.

But then Western liberals and human rights groups aren’t the target audience here - they don’t vote in elections or march in the streets.

Few people in Russia have heard much about Sergei Magnitsky - there won’t be extensive coverage here of his posthumous trial - and his story, if and when they hear it, will be that he was a criminal who died from a health condition, who has since been convicted of fraud.

By Kate Stallard
(Source: SkyNews)

International Women’s Day - Free Pussy Riot!

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:59:09 +0000

International Women’s Day - Free Pussy Riot!

Russian activist Alexander Dolmatov in Netherlands 'suicide'

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:47:00 +0000

An anti-Putin activist who fled Russia and sought political asylum has committed suicide in a Dutch detention centre, Dutch officials say.

Alexander Dolmatov’s death was not triggered by the refusal to grant him asylum in the Netherlands, the Dutch ambassador to Moscow said.

He cited an apparent farewell note that Mr Dolmatov, an activist in the Another Russia group, addressed to his mother.

But the activist’s lawyer says he may have been coerced into writing it.

Mr Dolmatov went to the Netherlands last June, fearing arrest in Russia.

He had participated in a big opposition demonstration on 6 May last year - the eve of Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in as president - which resulted in clashes with police.

The authorities have charged 18 people over the Moscow clashes and so far one protester has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.

Mr Dolmatov was found dead in a Rotterdam deportation centre early on Thursday, where he had been sent after the failure of his asylum application. Officials have not released details of the circumstances.

The Dutch acting ambassador in Moscow, Onno Elderenbosch, said it was clear from a suicide note that Mr Dolmatov’s death was not triggered by his asylum disappointment.

Mr Dolmatov, an engineer, belonged to Another Russia, a group led by Eduard Limonov, who was barred from standing in the presidential election.

The activist’s flat was searched by police after he left Russia and, according to Mr Limonov, he had been subjected to intimidation by the authorities.

Mr Dolmatov’s lawyer Yevgeny Arkhipov said he doubted the Dutch authorities’ version of events, saying he may have been coerced into writing the suicide note. He criticised the Dutch decision to place him in a deportation centre.

(Source: BBC News)