Update 11/5/10: Pivovarov has been released and his sentance annulled per court order, after a judge pointed out that his rights as a defendant had been violated. Among others, the activist was denied the right to choose an attorney and the police officers who had detained him were never identified.

Courts and law enforcement agencies are currently deciding the fates of three opposition activists who helped to organize a rally in defense of free assembly in St. Petersburg this past Sunday, Kasparov.ru reports.

Andrei Dmitriev and Andrei Pesotskov, both members of the Other Russia party, were detained at a rally at Gostiny Dvor as part of the Russian opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign. The two were charged with organizing an unsanctioned rally and disobeying a police officer, and were sentenced the next day to 5 and 14 days of administrative arrest, respectively. Following their sentencing, both Dmitriev and Pesotskov’s apartments were raided by police.

A St. Petersburg court acquitted both men on Wednesday morning, but authorities followed to file a criminal suit alleging that the two participated in “extremist” activity.

“The court reconsidered the punishments and released them,” said Other Russia representative Andrei Milyuk. “However, Pesotskov and Dmitriev were immediately taken to Center ‘E’ for interrogation on a criminal suit and it’s not clear whether or not they’re free to go,”

The Center for Extremism Prevention, commonly referred to as Center “E,” is a branch of federal Russian law enforcement that is charged with investigating what is deemed to be “extremist” activity. Human rights organizations around the world have criticized the center for torturing criminal suspects and other abuses of authority, particularly against opposition activists, and for its broad definition of what constitutes extremism.

A harsher sentence was handed down to Andrei Pivovarov, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian People’s Democratic Union and another organizer of the October 31 rally. Pivovarov was arrested at Gostiny Dvor together with Dmitriev and Pesotskov. On Monday, he was sentenced to 27 days of administrative arrest for organizing Strategy 31 rallies in August and October and for disobeying a police officer.

Originally, this same judge had sentenced Pivovarov to 14 days of arrest for his organization of the August 31 rally, but the oppositionist was released after two days of protests in support of his release. An appellate court ordered the case to be reviewed, and, as it turns out, Monday’s verdict is partially the result of that review.

Opposition activists have spent the past two days staging protests calling for Pivovarov’s release. In Moscow, Solidarity leaders Ilya Yashin, Sergei Davidis, and Mikhail Shneyder held solitary pickets – the only type of protest that doesn’t require government sanction to be held legally – while Solidarity leader Boris Nemtsov joined in ongoing pickets in St. Petersburg. The group plans to continue protesting so long as Pivovarov remains under arrest.

Two separate Strategy 31 rallies were held in St. Petersburg on October 31. One at Gostiny Dvor was attended by approximately 1000 people, by organizers’ estimates. Police began arresting the demonstrators immediately after the rally began. According to St. Petersburg police, only about 120 people came out to the rally, 104 of whom were detained.

A second rally at Dvortsovaya Square was attended by about 300 people. Police began detaining activists after they unfurled a 30-meter Russian flag.

Other rallies in the Strategy 31 campaign were held on Sunday across the country, including in the cities of Moscow, Vladivostok, Kurgan, Penza, Murmansk, Tver, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Astrakhan, Sochi, Ryazan, Krasnodarsk, and others.

Andrei Pivovarov, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian People’s Democratic Union (RNDS), was convicted on September 15 of organizing an unsanctioned rally and “insubordination to the lawful demands of a police officer.” He has been ordered to pay a 2000 ruble fine (about $65) and must spend 14 days in a criminal detention facility.

The rally was part of the Russian opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign, which is dedicated to the right to free assembly guaranteed under Article 31 of the Russian constitution. Pivovarov was among organizers of an August 31 rally at St. Petersburg’s Gostiny Dvor, attended by about 700 people. Several dozen rally participants were detained, including Pivovarov and other prominent local opposition leaders.

Pivovarov and the RNDS are planning to appeal both of Wednesday’s convictions. The organization began holding a series of protests outside of Pivovarov’s detention facility that same day.

The RNDS is convinced that Pivovarov’s sentence “was not based on the law” and is an attempt by the authorities to frighten the opposition.

“In my view, this is an extremely inappropriate measure,” said Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front. “I’ve already said multiple times that I don’t understand in general why they detain people at Gostiny Dvor. Nothing happens there that violates the public order.”

Activists participating in Strategy 31 rallies throughout Russia are routinely beaten and detained by the dozens.

“This measure is an act of intimidation,” Kurnosova concluded.

“I can’t remember this kind of interest, if not excitement, in our report,” Nemtsov wrote on his blog late Friday. The former deputy prime minister and co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement apparently plans to travel throughout Russia to distribute the controversial pamphlets, which condemn Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for the problems that have grown or first arose during his time in power. “We’re going to hand out ‘Putin. Results. 10 Years’ all over the country, regardless of the difficulties,” he said.

The scene below of people scrambling for copies of the report took place outside of St. Petersburg’s landmark Gostiny Dvor.

“Putin. Results. 10 Years” is available in Russian by clicking here.

Russian police detained as many as 170 protesters on Monday evening in Moscow, as more than 1000 opposition activists gathered for the ninth iteration of the Strategy 31 rallies, a series of protests in defense of the constitutional right to the freedom of assembly. Activists and observers present at the rally say that the violence used by the police against protesters was even more brutal than it has been in previous Strategy 31 events, resulting in dozens of injuries and at least two hospitalizations.

Despite repeated appeals by opposition organizers, the Moscow city government refused to sanction the May 31 rally – an ongoing trend that has been criticized by human rights groups and governmental bodies in Russia, Europe, and the United States. Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, which the organizers have made their traditional meeting place, had been occupied since earlier in the day by a group of pro-Kremlin youth organizations holding a rally in support of blood drives. Additionally, the entrance to the square from the adjacent metro station had been cordoned off by police.

Such was the scene when Strategy 31 protesters began to arrive for the 6:00 pm rally. According to the Kasparov.ru news site, a young man wearing a shirt indicating that he was involved with the blood drive rally grabbed a poster reading “down with the illegal government” out of the hands of one of the protesters. At that point, the crowd began loudly chanting, and police then began to make detentions.

Eyewitnesses noted that particularly harsh measures were used against participants of the rally. Police dragged protesters, including young women, along the ground and shoved them into buses waiting nearby. They also broke journalists’ cameras and fired pepper spray into the crowd, regardless of the fact that pregnant women and children were present.

Police went about the detentions and general brutality despite the presence of observers from the European Parliament, Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, reappointed by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2009, and Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman Aleksandr Muzykantsky. The police, in fact, attempted to detain Lukin before realizing who he was.

Editor-in-Chief of the New Times magazine, Yevgeniya Albats, was also detained, but was quickly released after she began reporting live from the scene, presumably by cell phone or through other reporters present.

Two of the three Strategy 31 organizers, former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva and writer Eduard Limonov (both of whom have been detained at previous rallies), were surrounded a ring of personal guards and reporters during Monday’s event. The police, however, violently detained the guards for no apparent reason. At the same time, people in the same blood drive rally shirts as the previously mentioned young man attempted to provoke fights with those surrounding the organizers.

Kasparov.ru reports that police detained at least 140 people in all, while Interfax reports the figure as closer to 170. Among those detained were Solidarity bureau member Ilya Yashin, Oborona coordinator Oleg Kozlovsky, Forum.msk news site Editor-in-Chief Anatoly Baranov, Sergei Aksenov of the Other Russia coalition, and Konstantin Kosyakin, the third Strategy 31 organizer. Numerous other journalists were also arrested. Reporting from one of the police buses, Solidarity member Nadezhda Mityushkin said that activists were being severely beaten, Kozlovsky in particular.

The detainees were split up and taken to several different police stations, where the situation for many began to deteriorate. Writing on their microblogs, a number of the detained activists said that OMON riot police held them in hot buses for more than an hour and refused to give them water. An ambulance was eventually called for one Solidarity member who became sick after being kept in one for “several hours.”

The most scandalous case appears to be that of Solidarity activist and Gazeta.ru journalist Aleksandr Artemev, who was hospitalized after police allegedly crushed his shoulder to pieces. The incident allegedly occurred when police ordered detainees off of one of the police buses, before following to violently shoved them back in.

Kasparov.ru reports that doctors have diagnosed Artemev with a comminuted shoulder fracture; as a result, he will have to spend ten days in the hospital.

Artemev noted that he came to the Strategy 31 rally as a civil activist, not as a journalist, and that he did not present his journalist credentials to police upon being detained.

The activist also said that he plans to file suit against the police, and that he has several witnesses as well as video footage of the incident.

Mikhail Mikhailov, editor-in-chief of Gazeta.ru, told Kasparov.ru that the incident was “monstrous.”

“The horror of it is that the police officers used violence against a person who possesses a passport as a citizen of the Russian Federation, and at that did it openly, fearing nothing,” said Mikhailov.

Colonel Aleksandr Khavkin, head of the Zamoskvoreche police station where Artemev was injured, denied that his officers were at fault.

Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk of RIA Novosti, who also heads the Public Council of the Moscow City Police, told Gazeta.ru that what happened to Artemev was “outrageous” and promised that the council would invite him to give his side of the story.

Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that once inside one of the police stations, the detained activists were held for five hours before being interrogated by men presumed to be Federal Security Service (FSB) officials.

Kasparov.ru reported Tuesday morning that most of the detainees were held by police overnight, and that by this afternoon some had still not been released. The majority are being charged with participating in an unsanctioned event (punishable by up to a 1000 ruble/$32 fine) and resisting a police officer (up to 15 days in detention).

Opposition activists also held a Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg. Police detained between 50 and 100 of the 500 gathered on Gostiny Dvor after the crowd began to shout “We need a different Russia” and “Russia will be free.”

Elsewhere in the city, 1500 oppositionists gathered for a “March of Dissent,” also dedicated to defending the constitutional right to free assembly. According to United Civil Front’s St. Petersburg branch leader Olga Kurnosova, OMON riot police initially attempted to block the march before backing down in the face of the insistent protesters.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of the rock band DDT and outspoken Kremlin critic, had asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday whether or not the march would be allowed. The prime minister then responded that it would be allowed if participants acted legally and did not, for example, hold the march near a hospital. The media followed to take his words as an official sanction of the march, although Putin’s press secretary refuted this the next day.

Additionally, in an interview with Gazeta.ru published on Sunday, Shevchuk said that he had received a call from the Russian White House before the meeting and was asked not to pose any “harsh questions of a political character” to the prime minister, because “the prime minister is very tired and you don’t need to irritate and upset him.”

Solidarity bureau member and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov took part in the March of Dissent in St. Petersburg, and commented on the situation in Moscow on his blog:

The situation in Moscow is markedly worse. More than 100 people have been detained, including our colleagues Ilya Yashin and Oleg Kozlovsky. Yashin was holding a Russian flag, Kozlovsky was holding nothing in general. They were held in a scorching hot bus, and are now waiting in the stations. This is a question of the dialogue between Shevchuk and Putin the other day. There are no hospitals on Triumfalnaya Square or Gostiny Dvor, nobody besides the OMON officers themselves blocked traffic. Nobody held banners or used megaphones. Nevertheless, there are more than 100 detainees. A classic example of hypocrisy and lies. Say one thing, think another, do something else.

Of course, having met with Putin, Shevchuk held his March of Dissent spectacularly. And decent people are grateful to him for that. But with Putin, like always – spite, an attempt to deride a distinguished rock musician, and a pathological fear of his own people.

In addition to the events in Moscow and St. Petersburg, several other Strategy 31 rallies were held on Monday all across Russia, including in the cities of Tomsk, Voronezh, Vladivostok, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk.

A video of the proceedings in Moscow can be seen by clicking here (note: the music that comes on halfway through was from the blood drive rally organizers).

Correction – June 9, 2010:  This story originally reported that the event held by pro-Kremlin youth groups was a blood drive. It was, in fact, a rally in support of the idea of a blood drive; no blood was donated at the event. The article has been corrected to reflect as much.