Monday, February 13, 2012

Russia

Russian Wins Police Harrassment Case At European High Court

(RFE/RL)

March 9, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The European Court of Human Rights today said it had awarded a Russian woman more than 35,000 euros in compensation for police harassment and ill-treatment she suffered in 1999.

Russia Criticized For Abuses In Chechnya, Centralized Power

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March 09, 2006

The court says in a press release that the applicant, identified as 26-year-old Olga Menesheva, was arrested by three plain-clothes police officers who were investigating a murder in her hometown of Bataisk, in southern Russia. Menesheva was then bundled into a car and taken to a police station, where she was beaten up and threatened with rape and violence against her family.

The next day, a judge sentenced Menesheva to five days of detention for resisting arrest.

The European Court says in its ruling that the treatment Menesheva endured during her arrest amounted to torture and that Russian authorities have failed to investigate her claims of ill-treatment.

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Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

Groups in a number of Arab states, angry over the Russian-Chinese veto of a UN resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria, have called for a one-day boycott of Russian and Chinese goods on February 12. More

Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More

Protesters gather behind a banner reading "Honest Elections" during a demonstration in Moscow on February 4.

How To Rig An Election

A whistle-blower in Samara explains how the authorities fixed the Duma elections in December -- and plan to do the same in the presidential vote in March. More