Elkhan Mirzoev was arrested during a Day of Anger protest on April 10 in Moscow. Police say the journalist threw himself on them repeatedly in an attempt to break through their barrier. In court on Tuesday, witnesses testified that this was untrue, and Mirzoev himself said he is a journalist and was arrested while carrying out his duties.

Mirzoev’s lawyers originally attempted to reschedule the proceedings on the basis that the materials in the case had been drawn up in an extremely careless fashion. However, On April 12, Tverskoy Regional Court Justice Borovkova dismissed the motion, saying that “consideration of the case has already begun.”

In the end, the judge sentenced him to four days of administrative arrest.

Mirzoev maintains his innocence and therefore plans to continue a hunger strike begun on April 11 in a sign of protest against what he says was his illegal detention.

The journalist was among ten people detained at the Day of Anger protest. They group was charged with disobeying police orders.

Police officers reportedly used force to remove public defender Denis Yudin from the station where the group was being held. Yudin had intended to provide the detainees with legal counsel.

The next day, the Tverskoy Court returned materials against the detainees that they had received from the police on the basis that they had been incorrectly prepared. The proceedings were then rescheduled.

One of Yashin’s fellow oppositionists from the Solidarity movement, Mikhail Maglov, was in the courtroom when the verdict was read. He told Kasparov.ru that Judge Svetlana Ukhnaleva saw no reason not to believe police officers’ testimony that Yashin violated the law.

At the same time, said Maglov, the judge chose to ignore the testimony of Police Sergeant Artem Charukhin, who told the court last week that he had falsified a police report about Yashin. She chose to ignore it because “he did not feel well in court and his testimony contradicts other evidence,” Maglov said. The judge did accept his police report – the same one Charukhin said he falsified, before later recanting – as legitimate evidence, since “it was drafted directly after [Yashin’s] detention and corresponds with other evidence,” said Maglov.

The judge did not take into account evidence from witnesses for the defense, alleging bias, and also ignored video evidence showing that Yashin did not resist police when he was detained – the charge he was convicted of. According to Maglov, the judge said the video was dark since it was filmed at night and that it was impossible to see what was going on.

Maglov told Kasparov.ru that Yashin planned to appeal the decision in Moscow City Court and also file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.

On his blog, Yashin described the court session on Thursday that preceded Friday’s verdict as Kafkaesque: “It has already become banal to compare Russian courts with Kafka’s The Trial. But it’s hard to pick a different comparison – it was a disgraceful tragicomedy with elements of blatant insanity and mockery of common sense.” His entire account of the trial’s final hearing can be read in Russian here.

Awkwardly, after Friday’s verdict was announced, Sergeant Charukhin was found in a police car outside the court, having apparentlk slept through the entire reading (click here for video).

Update 02/09/11: Charukhin has recanted his testimony and Yashin says he’s planning to present evidence proving his innocence. Read the update here.

The police officer who detained Russian oppositionist Ilya Yashin during a recent Strategy 31 rally has admitted that he falsified the report detailing the arrest, Novaya Gazeta reports.

On February 4, Moscow’s Tverskoy Regional Court held a second hearing on Yashin’s complaint about the verdict that sentenced him to 5 days of administrative arrest following the December 31 rally. During the hearing, police officer Artem Charukhin said he was given the oppositionist by an OMON riot police officer, who was “particularly violent” when “nearly shoving” him into a police bus.

When asked whether Charukhin participated in Yashin’s actual detention or whether he saw how fellow opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was detained, he said no – contradicting his own notes in the police report that Yashin was convicted on.

The report reads: “On December 31 at 20:50 hours I was together with Kondrashov. This is when Nemtsov was detained. Citizen Yashin was together with Nemtsov. During Nemtsov’s detention, Yashin actively resisted; he pushed me and Police Sergeant Kondrashov away from Nemtsov; he did not respond to lawful orders to stop his illegal actions, thus preventing us from carrying out our duties.”

Charukhin admitted that the report was, in fact, dictated to him by a Basmanny Internal Affairs agency official named Dmitry Popsuev.

In addition, the court reviewed video recordings of Yashin’s detention that showed he was detained before Nemtsov – making the police accusations that Yashin pushed the officers away from Nemtsov an impossibility.

Yashin’s complaint comes after he served 5 days in jail on charges of disobeying police orders during the New Year’s Eve Strategy 31 rally in Moscow. Fellow oppositionists Boris Nemtsov, Eduard Limonov, and Konstantin Kosyakin were also arrested in connection with the rally and served between 10 to 15 days in jail. Videos indicating that Yashin was innocent were not admitted to the trial as evidence and he promised to appeal his sentence upon being released. The oppositionists and their supporters say the arrests and jail sentences were politically motivated.

The Tverskoy Court handed down the ruling on September 7, convicting the 69-year-old leader of the organization For Human Rights of insubordination to a police officer. The accusations stemmed from Ponomarev’s participation as a co-organizer of an unsanctioned opposition protest dubbed the Day of Wrath, part of a series of demonstrations in which about 300 protesters gathered in Moscow on August 12 to demand the resignation of the Russian federal government and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. According to police figures, 35 people were detained at the event.

Ponomarev decided to face the court on Tuesday without a lawyer. He denounced the ruling as politically motivated.

As a result of his sentence, Ponomarev told Interfax, he was unable to attend a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday between Russian rights leaders and United States presidential advisor Michael McFaul.

William Burns, the United States under secretary of state for political affairs who attended the meeting, was critical of the ruling. “I should note that it is regrettable that Lev Ponomarev, who was supposed to be at the meeting, was not able to attend,” he said in remarks to the Interfax news agency. “The freedom of assembly is very important to the United States and very important for any democratic society.”

The Russian bureau of the international human rights organization Amnesty International expressed concern at Tuesday’s ruling. “Lev Ponomarev, who was just recently named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, has now received yet another punishment,” said bureau chief Sergei Nikitin.

Speaking to Ekho Moskvy radio, Memorial civil rights society chairman Oleg Orlov said that Ponomarev’s sentence was part of a disturbing pattern of crackdowns on human rights activists in Russia. “These kinds of sentences are becoming typical. They are repressive actions,” he said.

According to Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the Russian authorities are altogether scared of people coming out and protesting in the streets. This, she explained, is what explains “Ponomarev’s ridiculous punishment.”

The two other Day of Wrath organizers were also convicted of insubordination to an officer back on August 14. Konstantin Kosyakin was sentenced to three days of administrative arrest, and Sergei Udaltsov to four. Ponomarev’s court date was postponed after he fell ill in during holding in a police station and, fearing a hypertensive crisis, was hospitalized.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party said that the July 20 ruling gives oppositionists the opportunity to have the case reexamined by the Tverskoy Court.

The banned rally was part of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign, which holds demonstrations on the 31st of every month with that date in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly. Article 31 of the Russian constitution enshrines this right, hence the name and date. As holding unsanctioned rallies is punishable under Russian federal law, Strategy 31 organizers routinely file applications for official sanction with the Moscow mayor’s office. However, they are consistently refused – as was the case for the December 31 event.

However, documents obtained with the help of Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin convinced the Moscow City Court that the city’s refusal to sanction the rally needs to be reconsidered.

Usually, Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction Strategy 31 events under the pretense that other events have already been planned for the same time and place. While the December 31 event was refused sanction on this basis on December 22, the newly-revealed documents show that the place in question, Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square, was actually free until December 29. Only then was an event planned for the very time and place where the Moscow authorities knew the oppositionists were intent on holding their rally.

Averin said that by overturning the Tverskoy Court ruling, the Moscow City Court has effectively admitted that the Moscow authorities’ refusal to sanction Strategy 31 rallies is politically motivated and has nothing to do with a conflict of events.

The decision comes just a day after Strategy 31 organizers were denied sanction for an upcoming rally on July 31.

Former Soviet Dissident and Strategy-31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that an official from the mayor’s office called to inform her on July 19 that the rally could be held at several other locations, but not on Triumfalnaya Square – which has already long since become a traditional gathering place for Strategy 31 participants.

“I didn’t even ask for a reason,” said Alexeyeva. “I’m not interested. It’s the same thing over and over again.”

On Wednesday, the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow handed down the sentence to 56-year-old Sergei Mokhnatkin, finding him guilty of assaulting a police officer during a December 31, 2009, rally that was part of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign in defense of free assembly. In the yearlong history of the rallies, he is the first person to receive an notable term of confinement.

Mokhnatkin’s supporters insist that he had nothing to do with the protest. According to United Civil Front representative Aleksandr Khatov, the now-convicted man was detained when the rally was broken up by police. “He was just a passerby on his way to Red Square in order to meet the New Year there,” said Khatov. “But then he saw that police had seized a woman and were dragging her towards a bus.”

Mokhnatkin came to the defense of the elderly woman and, as a result, was detained and put in a police bus with nine other rally participants. There, Khatov went on, the man was handcuffed to his seat and beaten in front of all those present.

70-year-old Raisa Vavilova, the woman who Mokhnatkin tried to help, testified as a witness for the defense during the trial. She told the Interfax news agency that Mokhnatkin had never previously appeared at any demonstrations by the extra-systemic [those denied the right to operate in the political system – ed.] opposition. “He was an accidental passerby who stood up for me when I was detained on Triumfalnaya Square. They thought he was one of us,” confirmed the elderly woman.

According to Khatov, Mokhnatkin testified that the incident with the police officer took place in the police bus where he was put after being detained. There, said the defendant, a policeman attempted to choke him. The court ruled, however, that the officer did not use any violence against Mokhnatkin, as an examination had found no signs of trauma on his body, and the officer, meanwhile, had a broken nose.

“He couldn’t have hit anyone, because he was handcuffed to the seat,” said Khatov. “Maybe he turned clumsily while he was being beaten.”

Mokhnatkin turned out to be the only one of the 60 people detained at the rally who met the New Year in police confinement; all others had been let out before midnight. After being released, the man filed a complaint with the police department demanding that the officers who beat him be punished.

On June 1, Mokhnatkin was summoned to a police station where, he was told, he would have a chance to identify his assailants. Instead, said Khatov, police wanted to fingerprint the Tver resident. When Mokhnatkin refused, he was arrested and sent to a pretrial detention facility.

In response, Mokhnatkin declared a dry hunger strike – no food, no water – which Khatov says the man has now sustained for eight days. While dry hunger strikes are known to sometimes last as long as a week, most people cannot survive more than three days without water. When the trial began on June 8, his supporters found that he looked quite ill and feared for his health.

The verdict handed down today noted that the court considered only the police officers to be credible witnesses, dismissing all those on the side of the defense as persons of interest.

“It’s notable that the testimony from defense witnesses was not accepted for consideration,” Anastasia Rybachenko, an activist with the opposition movement Solidarity, wrote on her blog. “The judge felt that she couldn’t trust them, since they entirely refute the testimony by the prosecution’s witnesses – police officers.”

While prosecutors asked Mokhnatkin to be sentenced to the full five years allowed by Russian law, the court, according to Gazeta.ru, took “all circumstances of the case” into consideration and ruled that it was possible to hand down a lighter sentence.

Mokhnatkin’s lawyers do not plan to appeal.

“He was given a state lawyer who didn’t even show up at the verdict reading,” said Rybachenko.

Renowned rights activist and Strategy 31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva said that the defendant had turned down legal aid that rights advocates had offered him.

“We sent Makhnatkin a lawyer. For some reason, he turned him down; it’s possible that he didn’t understand that it was free aid,” Alexeyeva said on Ekho Moskvy radio. “He’s something of a strange man, this Makhnatkin.”

“Not only does he not deserve two and a half years, but those police officers who fabricated this case deserve punishment,” she added.

Alexeyeva explained that police at the rally had taken Makhnatkin “for one of [National Bolshevik Party leader and Strategy 31 co-organizer Eduard] Limonov’s guards and was very glad that a guard of Limonov allowed himself to hit a police officer,” she went on. However, “when it became clear that he had nothing to do with Limonov, it was already too late.”

Alexeyeva said she would work to ensure Makhnatkin’s release.

“The man is innocent and we are going to get him released,” she said.

Solidarity bureau member Sergei Davidis said that his movement is looking into getting Makhnatkin a lawyer to appeal the court’s verdict.

Speaking to Ekho Moskvy, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity bureau member Boris Nemtsov denounced the case as a show trial.

“This is an act of intimidation; it is aimed at making it so that the people who more and more gather on the 31st date become afraid of winding up in prison,” he said. “It is a show trial, done so that all the rest who plan to come out on July 31 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, stop.”

Nikolai Alexeyev, founder of the Gayrussia.ru rights project and one of the event’s organizers, told Interfax on that he was told over the phone by the mayor’s office that the application for Moscow Pride had been turned down. Parades, protests, rallies, and other similar events require government sanction to be legally held in Russia; organizing an unsanctioned rally can lead to jail time.

The city did not appear to attempt to hide its flagrant violation of Russian law in banning Moscow Pride. “Contrary to the demands of acting legislation, the Moscow government did not propose any kind of alternative [locations] for holding the planned event to organizers of the march,” reads a statement on Gayrussia.ru.

Alexeyev said that he and his fellow organizers intend to file a complaint about the city’s decision with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. More immediately, he said they would appeal the decision in Moscow’s Tverskoy Court after receiving written confirmation that the parade has been banned.

“We’re going to try to get the case considered by the court before the date of the event – May 29,” Alexeyev said.

The Strasbourg Court is set to rule this year on three cases filed by Moscow Pride organizers against the city for banning their parades in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Their event was also prohibited in 2009, but 30 participants attempted to march in defiance of the ban. Five minutes after the beginning of the march, all 30 activists were arrested by OMON riot police.

Earlier, Alexeyev stated that if the Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction this year’s Moscow Pride parade, they would try to gain permission to hold it on the territory of an embassy of a Western country.

Moscow Mayor Luzhkov is famous for his vocal homophobia, routinely denouncing gay pride parades a “satanic activity.” In January, he vowed to ban what he called “the display of blasphemy under the guise of creativity and protected by the principle of freedom of speech” in Moscow on a permanent basis.

Russian gay rights advocates have suffered from strong public and governmental opposition dating back to Soviet times. In accordance with a Stalinist decree, homosexuality carried a sentence of up to five years in prison until 1993, when legislators legalized it at the urging of the Council of Europe. It remained on the list of Russian mental illnesses until 1999. While there are no laws explicitly banning homosexuality, government authorities have failed to recognize the need for anti-discrimination legislation. Public opinion remains strongly opposed to such reforms – as of 2005, 43.5 percent of Russians supported the re-criminalization of adult homosexual acts.

On April 5, the Tverskoy Court in Moscow sanctioned a search and seizure of the New Times editorial office in connection with police accusations of libel. The police attempted to carry out the seizure this past Wednesday, but Editor-in-Chief Yevgeniya Albats refused to hand over any documents, maintaining that the seizure is illegal while the magazine awaits a hearing to contest the decision in the Moscow City Court.

In response to the failed search, the international journalism watchdog Reports Without Borders and the Russian Union of Journalists have issued press releases condemning the court decision and actions by the police. Both are reproduced below.

Russian Union of Journalists
Announcement
April 16, 2010

The Russian Union of Journalists expresses its extreme anxiety with the attempt to seize documents from the editorial offices of the New Times. The court decision allowing investigators to seize interview notes that contain references to sources of information constitutes a gross violation of source confidentiality as guaranteed by media legislation and the Russian criminal code. We hope that higher courts will rectify this mistake, or the impending plenum of the Russian Supreme Court will explain that the court can free an editorial office from its duty to keep journalistic sources confidential only in connection with an ongoing case; that is to say, after the case has been brought to court, and not simply by the request of investigators or interrogators.

We cannot disregard this dangerous precedent since it risks becoming common practice, thus burying the possibility for a trusting relationship between journalists and their sources. Source confidentiality is a safeguard for the constitutional right of citizens to obtain complete and objective information.

Secretariat of the Russian Union of Journalists

Translated by theOtherRussia.org.

Reports Without Borders
Police try to search Moscow weekly for sources to story about elite unit
April 14, 2010

Reporters Without Borders condemns today’s abortive attempt by the Moscow police to search the premises of the Moscow-based independent weekly The New Times/Novoye Vremya in execution of a court order that is the subject of an appeal by the weekly.

Moscow’s Tverskoi district court issued the search order on 5 April in response to a libel action by the elite Omon police and the General Directorate for Internal Affairs (GUVD) under article 129 of the criminal code over a 1 February story in The New Times headlined “Omon Slaves” about alleged corrupt practices within the elite unit.

Reporters Without Borders stresses its complete support for the magazine and its staff, who have the courage to do proper investigative reporting into matters of general interest, an activity that is at the core of real journalism.

“We share the view of The New Times editor Yevgenia Albats that the protection of journalists’ sources is an essential element of press freedom and that investigative journalism cannot exist without it,” Reporters Without Borders said.

No search can legally be carried out in response to the court order until the weekly’s appeal has been heard, and The New Times deputy editor Ilya Barabanov told Reporters Without Borders that the search order was illegal under articles 41 and 49 of the media law.

Based on information provided by unidentified sources with Omon, The New Times story accused the elite unit of selling its protection services to businessmen and even criminal organisations. It drew an immediate denial from Omon followed by the libel action.

The Moscow City Court is set to hear the New Times’ complaint on April 28, and we will be following the course of events as they continue to develop.