Posts Tagged ‘bastrykin’
Fatal odyssey of a Russian prisoner tells a dark tale; Above the law
International Herald Tribune
More than a year ago the members of an obscure oversight panel filed into Butyrskaya Prison to look into the death of a prisoner. They were hardly an intimidating bunch: mostly retired women, scribbling their observations in notebooks, regarded by the prison staff as a minor irritant, like fleas.
In a country whose law enforcement wields enormous power, it is easy enough to ignore civilian watchdog groups. But this day was different. When the doctors were led in and told to take a seat, the panel’s leader, a veteran human rights activist named Valery V. Borshchev, felt something unfamiliar in the air.
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After Russian Death, Inquiry Doors Open and Shut
The New York Times
by Ellen Barry
It was more than a year ago when six members of an obscure oversight panel filed into Butyrskaya Prison to look into the death of a prisoner. They were hardly an intimidating bunch: retired women in hats, mostly, scribbling their observations in notebooks, regarded by the prison staff as a minor irritant, like fleas.
In a country whose law enforcement structures wield enormous power, it is easy enough to ignore civilian watchdog groups. But this day was different. When the doctors were led in and told to take a seat, the panel’s leader, a veteran human rights activist named Valery V. Borshchev, felt something unfamiliar in the air.
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The Concealed Battle to Run Russia
The New York Review of Books
by Amy Knight
Despite their professed mutual respect, Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, and his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, apparently cannot agree on one question—which of them will be running for the Russian presidency in March 2012. Over a year ago Putin told foreign journalists that he and Medvedev would at some point “sit down and come to an agreement” about who would be the presidential nominee of United Russia, the overwhelmingly pro-Kremlin party, in the next election. (He repeated the same promise in a recent interview with Larry King on CNN.) But that moment has yet to come, and in the meantime, both men are provoking speculation about their possible candidacies.
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Hermitage Capital urges Russian authorities to conduct transparent trial
Interfax
Jamison Firestone, the former boss of Hermitage Capital fund lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy [who died in Russian custody], has asked the Russian Prosecutor-General [Yuriy Chayka] and the head of the Russian Investigations Committee [Aleksandr Bastrykin] to conduct an open trial against Vyacheslav Khlebnikov, who figures in the case relating to embezzlement.
“J. Firestone demanded that the Prosecutor-General’s Office refuse Khlebnikov’s appeal, which is supported by the Interior Ministry, to conduct the trial in a ‘special’ (reduced) manner, without any examination of the evidence in court,” says a statement from the fund received by Interfax today.
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