Watchdog

KRASNOYARSK, Russia -- Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev has been released from a Siberian prison after serving a 4 1/2-year sentence.

Razvozzhayev says he was abducted by Russian security agents in Ukraine in 2012 and brought to Russia, where he was arrested and tried.

A court in Moscow found him guilty of helping to organize a protest on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square in May 2012 and of attempts to organize similar rallies across Russia.

Police and protesters blamed each other for violence that erupted at the protest on the eve of Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency for a third term.

Razvozzhayev's wife, Yulia, met him at the prison gates in the city of Krasnoyarsk.

Razvozzhayev told RFE/RL that he does not yet know what he is going to do now but that he would like to contribute to the democratization of Russia and reforms in the country's corrections system.

For two years, Razvozzhayev will be monitored by police and barred from attending public gatherings and events.

BRUSSELS -- A spokeswoman for European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has called for an investigation into allegations that authorities in the Russian region of Chechnya have been abducting, torturing, and even killing gay men in an apparent coordinated campaign.

Spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic on April 6 called for "prompt, effective, and thorough investigations into the reports" and for "anyone found guilty of or complicit in such crimes" to be prosecuted.

On April 4, the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that more than 100 homosexual men had been rounded up in Chechnya in an "unprecedented" campaign.

At least three men were reported killed.

A spokesman for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov rejected the accusations, saying there were no homosexuals in Chechnya and if there were, their relatives would "send them somewhere they wouldn't return from."

A representative of the Russian LGBT Network told RFE/RL on April 5 that her organization had received more than 10 appeals from Chechen men seeking to leave the North Caucasus republic.

"We have never before encountered information anywhere in Russia that hundreds of people have been detained, tortured, and even killed," Russian LGBT Network spokeswoman Svetlana Zakharova said. "I think this is an unprecedented case."

With reporting by Novaya Gazeta