France has confirmed that Iran detained a French tourist in May 2020 on vague security-related charges.

The Foreign Ministry said on February 24 the French national was under consular protection and the French Embassy maintained contact with him and his family.

The confirmation came after multiple media outlets reported on the 35-year-old tourist's arrest.

The detainee's lawyer, Saeed Dehghan, told Reuters that the man, identified only as Benjamin, was being held at Vakilabad prison in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

"He was detained nine months ago and he faces contradictory and false charges," Dehghan said.

In separate comments to AP, Dehghan denied reports Benjamin had been arrested for flying a drone in the desert.

He said his client operated a helicam, or a remote-controlled mini-helicopter used to take video or pictures.

The arrest comes as the United States and European parties to Iran's 2015 nuclear deal are trying to restore the accord that was abandoned in 2018 by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Iran's security agencies regularly detain foreigners or dual nationals, mostly on espionage charges.

Critics say Iran uses such arbitrarily detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract political concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.

Iran also complains its citizens have been detained in the West for violating sanctions, which it deems illegal.

In March 2020, France and Iran conducted a prisoner exchange, swapping French academic Roland Marchal for Iranian engineer Jalal Ruhollahnejad, who had been detained over alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

Based on reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters

The state-owned Uzbek company at the center of an RFE/RL investigation into a secret luxury mountain resort allegedly built for President Shavkat Mirziyoev has dismissed the report as "unfounded and untrue."

The investigation led by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, published on February 23, lifted the curtain on a luxurious mansion allegedly built for Mirziyoev in the protected Ugam-Chatkal National Park about 100 kilometers northeast of Tashkent.

SEE ALSO:

The Uzbek President's Secret Mountain Hideaway

Uzbekistan Railways, a sprawling state-owned company that spearheaded construction of the mountain resort, said in a statement posted on its website on February 24 that the Shovvozsoy River area was transferred to the company in 2010 to "preserve the existing ecosystem."

It added that over the past 10 years, the company used extra-budgetary funds amounting to 495 billion soms ($43 million) to develop infrastructure and recreation facilities in the park. In addition to the Shovvozsoy complex, other resorts in the area employ 90,000 people, the company said.

"In these resorts and sanatoriums on the basis of contracts and referrals with JSC 'Uzbekistan Railways,' along with the railwaymen, the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Cabinet of Ministers, various ministries, departments and government agencies, as well as local investors, ecotourism and extreme tourism, health promotion and rehabilitation services are provided to partners and tourists," it said.

The statement, however, did not address several outstanding questions over the project, leaving it shrouded in secrecy.

Construction of the compound, which features helicopter landing pads and is subject to a no-fly zone, began in 2017 and was largely completed by the end of 2018.

Locals say a new reservoir built next to the compound has disrupted their water supply, displaced families, and caused environmental damage.

Construction of the adjacent reservoir was carried out by the politically connected company involved in the building of the Sardoba Dam in eastern Uzbekistan, which burst in 2020, leaving six people dead and forcing thousands from their homes, the RFE/RL investigation revealed.

Officials have never publicly explained the reservoir and resort, nor have they provided information about the costs, which multiple RFE/RL sources estimated at several hundred million dollars to build.

Construction workers said they were forced to hand over their phones while working on site, and roadblocks and security guards prevent the public from approaching the area.

Since coming to power in 2017, Mirziyoev has portrayed himself as committed to improving transparency, human rights protections, and anti-corruption efforts in the Central Asian nation of 30 million, striking a contrast to his autocratic predecessor, Islam Karimov.

A Russian court has sentenced a mother and her son to prison as part of ongoing persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group.

A court in Abakan in the Siberian region of Khakassia on February 24 sentenced Roman Baranovsky to six years in prison and his mother, Valentina Baranovskaya, to two years, the group said.

Baranovskaya, 69, is the first woman to be imprisoned from the religious group. Last year, she suffered a stroke.

Addressing the court in a final statement, Baranovskaya condemned Russia for the "shameful persecutions against the most peaceful, kind, and law-abiding citizens of its country."

The Jehovah's Witnesses said the verdicts will be appealed.

Russia labeled the Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist group and banned it in 2017, leading to a wave of court cases and prison sentences against its members.

For decades, the Jehovah's Witnesses have been viewed with suspicion in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin.

The Christian group is known for door-to-door preaching, close Bible study, rejection of military service, and not celebrating national and religious holidays or birthdays.

Chechnya's top court has ruled that the arrest of two young gay men was legal amid growing concern over their safety and lack of legal representation in the North Caucasus region know for abuses against LGBT people.

The court ruling on February 24 comes after Salekh Magamadov, 18, and a 17-year-old companion were abducted by security agents earlier in the month from Nizhny Novgorod in western Russia and driven back to Chechnya.

RFE/RL is not revealing the identity of the second teenager because he is a minor.

The two are accused of providing food to an illegal armed group and could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted. They are currently being held in pretrial detention.

According to the Russian LGBT Network, a rights group, the young men were forced to sign statements and testimonies under threats and pressure.

Meanwhile, they have also been denied access to independent lawyers and doctors despite a demand from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

On February 8, the ECHR ordered Russia to explain the reasons for the detention of the two men, provide them access to independent lawyers, health care, and family visits.

The LGBT Network has warned that two men face "mortal danger" in Chechnya.

The nongovernmental organization helped both men leave Chechnya and settle in Nizhny Novgorod in July.

The teenagers intended to leave Russia, but they were detained by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents earlier this month and taken to Chechnya.

Rights groups have accused predominantly Muslim Chechnya of targeting sexual minorities, including the use of abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killing.

With reporting by Current Time

YEREVAN -- A court in Armenia has issued verdicts against members of an armed group, known as Sasna Tsrer, who seized a police base in the capital in 2016 and took hostages.

The court on February 24 sentenced seven members of the group to prison terms between six and eight years.

One member, Smbat Barseghian, was found guilty of killing two police officers and sentenced to 25 years.

Charges against Araik Khandoyan were dropped due to his death. Another defendant, Armen Bilian, who was charged with killing a police officer, was acquitted.

Most of the more than two dozen members of Sasna Tsrer, a fringe opposition group composed of a number of prominent Nagorno-Karabakh war veterans, were set free pending the outcome of their ongoing trial after the change of government in Armenia in 2018.

Many of them were released under the personal guarantees of parliament members.

In July 2016, the armed group led by retired army Colonel Varuzhan Avetisian seized a police compound in Yerevan's Erebuni district and demanded that then-President Serzh Sarkisian free jailed nationalist politician Zhirayr Sefilian and step down.

A two-week standoff with security forces left three police officers dead.

A political party formed around the Sasna Tsrer movement took part in parliamentary elections in December 2018. The party failed to clear the 5 percent threshold to enter the legislature by securing less than 2 percent of the vote.

Philippe Delpal, a French national and an associate of prominent U.S. investor Michael Calvey, has reiterated his innocence as a high-profile embezzlement trial involving the two men, along with five others, resumed in Moscow.

Delpal told the court on February 24 that accusations against him, Calvey, and five other businessmen over the alleged illegal allocation of loans in 2015 were baseless, and that all financial operations in question had the goal of saving Vostochny Bank.

Last week, Calvey, the founder of the private-equity group Baring Vostok, also proclaimed his innocence, saying he planned to continue investing in Russia after the trial is over, "but everything depends on the end of the process."

The trial of Calvey, Delpal, and five associates -- Russian citizens Vagan Abgaryan, Ivan Zyuzin, Maksim Vladimirov, Aleksei Kordichev, and Aleksandr Tsakunov -- started on February 2, almost two years after their arrest.

The defendants all deny any wrongdoing, saying the charges against them are being used to pressure them in a business dispute over control of Vostochny Bank.

The trial was adjourned until March 3.

Russia's Supreme Court in November 2020 eased the detention terms for the seven businessmen, ruling that they may not leave their homes between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., communicate with other suspects in places other than the courtroom, send or receive mail, or use telephones unless in an emergency.

The case has rattled Russia's business community and prompted several prominent officials and businessmen to voice concerns about the treatment of the executives.

Baring Vostok is one of the largest and oldest private-equity firms operating in Russia. It was founded in the early 1990s and manages more than $3.7 billion in assets. The company was an early major investor in Yandex, Russia's dominant search engine.

Calvey is one of three Americans currently held in Russia on charges supporters say are groundless.

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was sentenced in June 2020 to 16 years on espionage charges that he has vehemently rejected.

Another former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, was sentenced to nine years in prison in late July 2020 after a Moscow court found him guilty of assaulting two police officers, a charge that he refused to admit.

With reporting by Interfax and TASS

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A court in Kazakhstan has rejected a request for early release filed by jailed activist Almat Zhumaghulov, whom rights organizations in the Central Asian country have recognized as a political prisoner.

Zhumgahulov's relatives and colleagues told RFE/RL on February 24 that a court in Qapshaghai in the southern region of Almaty made the decision the previous day.

The relatives said that Zhumaghulov took part in the hearing via video link from a penal colony in the town of Zarechny and that the ruling will be appealed.

Zhumaghulov and another activist, Kenzhebek Abishev, were sentenced to eight years and seven years in prison, respectively, in December 2018 after they and a third defendant were found guilty of planning a "holy war" because they were spreading the ideas of the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) opposition movement.

The two pleaded not guilty, calling the case against them politically motivated.

Last week, Abishev, who was previously granted an early release for good behavior in prison, was not released as expected after the Almaty regional prosecutor/s office appealed the ruling to free him at the very last moment.

The DVK was founded by Mukhtar Ablyazov, an outspoken critic of the Kazakh government who has been residing in France for several years.

Ablyazov has been organizing unsanctioned anti-government rallies in Kazakhstan via the Internet while in exile.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kyrgyz counterpart Sadyr Japarov have discussed bilateral ties in Moscow as Kyrgyzstan emerges from a political crisis.

Japarov, who was elected president on January 10, arrived in the Russian capital on his first foreign trip as the Central Asian state's leader on February 24.

"Undoubtedly, my first trip abroad to Russia as the president of the Kyrgyz Republic proves the high level of the bilateral ties between our nations. We intend to continue strengthening strategic partnership and allied ties," Japarov said at the meeting with Putin.

Putin expressed hope that the political crisis in Kyrgyzstan would come to an end, calling ties between the two countries "close and privileged."

During Japarov's two-day visit in Moscow he will also hold talks with other top Russian officials, including Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and the speakers of both chambers of parliament.

Kyrgyzstan has been in political crisis since parliamentary elections in October led to protests that triggered the toppling of the government and the resignation of then-President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.

Japarov was among several prominent politicians freed from prison by protesters during the unrest.

He had been serving a 10-year prison sentence for hostage taking during a protest against a mining operation in northeastern Kyrgyzstan in October 2013. He has denied the charge.

The 52-year-old's landslide victory came in an election that international observers said "generally respected" fundamental freedoms even though the vote was not "fully fair."

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax

NUR-SULTAN -- Dozens of people from across Kazakhstan have gathered in front of the presidential office in Nur-Sultan to demand the creation of a government commission to deal with what they called wrongful court decisions against them.

The men and women, many of them visibly frustrated and angry, gathered at the site on February 24, preserving social distance to comply with coronavirus regulations.

One of the protesters, Dauytbek Moldabaev from the southern town of Qapshaghai, told RFE/RL that the group had officially asked the chief of the presidential office, Erlan Qoshanov, to meet with them but they didn't receive an answer.

Some of the protesters were allowed to enter the building one by one, where they were officially told that presidential administration's officials would not meet with them, as "there is no need for a government commission."

One of the protesters, Alia Aitpaeva, said after she was allowed inside the building that she was told the protesters could file complaints separately with the presidential administration if they wished to do so.

Some of the protesters said they will now turn to the European Parliament and Western governments for help.

The day before, a group of civil rights activists from various regions gathered in Nur-Sultan, where they said they would ask the European Parliament to impose personal sanctions against the leadership of the ruling Nur-Otan party and other top officials for what they called the "refusal to deal with wrongful court decisions."

On February 11, European lawmakers adopted a resolution on the human rights situation in Kazakhstan that expressed concern over the "deterioration in the general situation of human rights and a crackdown on civil society organizations in Kazakhstan."

The United States should take the first step toward saving the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, Iran's ambassador in Geneva told the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on February 24.

Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh spoke a day after Iran officially began restricting international inspections of its nuclear facilities in a bid to pressure European countries and Washington into lifting economic sanctions and restoring the landmark nuclear deal.

"The onus is on the offending party to return, restart, and compensate for the damages as well as to reassure that they would not renege again," Ambassador Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh said, reiterating Tehran's long-held position.

"There is a path forward with a logical sequence as (Iranian Foreign) Minister (Mohammad Javad) Zarif recently outlined."

Iran confirmed on February 22 that it had ended its implementation of an Additional Protocol to the 2015 accord allowing for surprise inspections of nuclear-related sites.

SEE ALSO:

Iran Confirms End To Snap Inspections As U.S. Seeks To 'Lengthen, Strengthen' Nuclear Deal

The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from the agreement that lifted most international sanctions in exchange for Iran's curbing its nuclear ambitions.

Trump gradually reimposed crippling sanctions that have impacted heavily on Iran's tattered economy.

The new administration of President Joe Biden has sought to reverse that decision, although Iran’s violations of the accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) and the move to limit international inspections underscore the difficulty of the task.

Iran is demanding that Washington first remove punishing sanctions.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urged Iran on February 24 to accept diplomatic overtures to preserve the nuclear accord and avoid further violations of its commitments.

"In the end, Iran needs to understand that what's important is to de-escalate and accept the offer of diplomacy that's on the table, including from the United States," Maas said.

China, which is one of the signatories of the JCPOA and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, said on February 24 that lifting U.S. sanctions on the country is key to breaking the deadlock.

“We have always believed that the return of the U.S. to the comprehensive agreement and the lifting of sanctions against Iran are the keys to breaking the deadlock in the Iranian nuclear issue," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily news briefing in Beijing.

“The current situation on the Iranian nuclear issue is at a critical point, with both opportunities and challenges," Wang told reporters.

China, which has maintained friendly relations and close economic ties with Tehran, has long been against sanctions.

Beijing has been working with the other parties in the agreement -- Germany, France, Britain, and Russia -- to maintain the deal after Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. unilaterally out.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa

Prosecutors have asked a court in the city of Samara in Russia to sentence civil rights activist Karim Yamadayev from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan to six years and seven months in prison for mocking President Vladimir Putin and two of his close associates in a YouTube video.

Pavel Chikov, the chief of the Agora nongovernmental legal-aid organization, quoted Yamadayev's lawyer, Vladimir Krasikov, on February 24 as saying that the prosecutor had asked the court to find the defendant guilty of promoting terrorism and insulting authorities.

Yamadayev, a former police officer in Tatarstan, was arrested in January 2020 and charged over a video he posted in late 2019 on his YouTube channel.

The video in question features Yamadayev, dressed as a judge, reading death sentences to two men whose heads are covered with black sacks. A white sign hangs from their necks with the names "Dmitry Peskov" and "Igor Sechin."

Peskov is Putin’s long-serving press spokesman, while Sechin is the powerful chief of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft.

Another man in the video portrays a third defendant who also has his head covered with a black sack and a sign with the name "Vladimir Putin."

The former head of Russia's Mari El Republic, Leonid Markelov, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison on corruption charges.

A court in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on February 24 found the 57-year-old Markelov guilty of bribe-taking, abuse of office, and illegal ammunition possession, and sentenced him the same day.

The court also ordered Markelov to pay a fine of 235.3 million rubles ($3.2 million).

Prosecutors in the high-profile case had asked the court to sentence Markelov to 17 years in prison.

Markelov rejected all the charges and pleaded not guilty.

"We will appeal the sentence that has been handed down," Interfax quoted Markelov's lawyer, Yelena Vyatkina, as saying.

Markelov led the Mari El Republic in Russia's Volga Federal District from 2001-17. He was arrested in April 2017 days after he had resigned. Investigators accused him of accepting the equivalent of more than $3.1 million in bribes.

While in pretrial detention in Moscow, Markelov complained of "torture" conditions. He said that he had been pressured in the Lefortovo detention center, where he says he was frequently transferred from one cell to another, subjected to frequent searches, and deprived of medical services.

Markelov’s lawyers also said their client was pressured to testify against himself.

With reporting by Interfax

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law bills that beef up fines for violating a controversial law on "foreign agents" as well as other legislation relating to protests, such as the financing of rallies and disobedience of law enforcement, in the wake of unsanctioned protests in support of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

According to the laws, signed by Putin on February 24, releasing information about so-called "foreign agents" and their materials without also indicating their status could lead to fines of up to 2,500 rubles ($34) for individuals and up to 500,000 rubles ($6,720) for entities. The law applies regardless of whether the "foreign agent" in question is a mass media outlet or an individual.

The other laws signed by Putin on February 24 set fines for individuals found guilty of illegally financing a rally at up to 15,000 rubles ($200), while officials and organizations for such actions will be ordered to pay up to 30,000 rubles ($400) and 100,000 rubles ($1,345), respectively.

Putin also signed a law that significantly increases fines for disobedience of police and security forces. Police detained more than 11,000 people at nationwide protests over the past month in support of Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a protest monitoring group.

SEE ALSO:

RFE/RL Accuses Russia Of Violating Treaty Through 'Foreign Agent' Law

Russia’s "foreign agent" legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.

Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, as well as Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on its “foreign agents” list and to impose restrictions on them.

The Russian state media monitor Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration.

The agency has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL’s news websites. When they go through the court system, the total fines levied could reach nearly $1 million.

RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.” Human Rights Watch has described the foreign agent legislation as “restrictive” and intended “to demonize independent groups.”

"RFE/RL will not be deterred from our independent reporting for our Russian audience," RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement on February 24.

“The Kremlin is targeting RFE/RL because of the audience response to our work and interest in our coverage of recent political events in Russia. The Russian people will be the ultimate victims of laws like this that use intimidation tactics to try to silence voices and reduce media diversity,” Fly added.

Since early in Putin’s presidency, the Kremlin has steadily tightened the screws on independent media. The country is ranked 149th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.

Navalny, 44, was flown to Germany last August after collapsing in Siberia following what he said was an attempt by Putin to kill him with a military-grade nerve agent. That assertion has been backed by many Western countries, but the Kremlin has steadfastly denied any involvement in the incident.

Upon his return to Moscow in January, Navalny was detained immediately and subsequently sentenced to jail on February 2 for parole violations while being treated abroad for the poison attack.

The court changed his 3 1/2 -year suspended sentence to a prison term. He is set to spend just over 2 1/2 years behind bars because of time already served in detention.

Russia has ignored a demand by the European Court of Human Rights to release Navalny, and European Union foreign ministers agreed earlier this week to impose sanctions on four senior Russian officials close to Putin in a mainly symbolic response to Navalny's jailing.

The EU is expected to formally approve the agreement in early March.

The editor in chief of a Kyrgyz investigative website and a former Ukrainian prosecutor-general are among 12 people who have been recognized by the U.S. State Department as anti-corruption champions.

The winners of the new International Anti-Corruption Champions Award were announced on February 23 by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said in a statement that the award recognizes people who have worked tirelessly, often in the face of adversity, to combat corruption in their own countries.

Bolot Temirov, editor in chief of the Kyrgyz investigative website FactCheck, and Ruslan Ryaboshapka, who was forced out of his job as Ukraine's prosecutor-general last year in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, were among the recipients.

FactCheck and open-source investigative organization Bellingcat probed Raimbek Matraimov, the controversial former deputy chief of the Customs Service, and his relatives, who are at the center of an alleged corruption scandal involving the funneling of close to a billion dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.

Matraimov was rearrested this month on corruption charges and is currently in pretrial detention.

Temirov was attacked near his website's office in Bishkek in January 2020 after the investigation was published, prompting the United States and several media freedom watchdogs to call on Kyrgyz authorities to conduct a swift and thorough investigation.

Ryaboshapka was well-regarded by anti-corruption activists for his efforts to streamline and professionalize the scandal-ridden Prosecutor-General’s Office in Ukraine. He served as prosecutor-general from August 29, 2019, until he left the post on March 5, 2020.

Blinken said in the statement announcing the awards that corruption threatens security, hinders economic growth, undermines democracy and human rights, destroys trust in public institutions, facilitates transnational crime, and siphons away public and private resources.

“The Biden administration recognizes that we will only be successful in combating these issues by working in concert with committed partners, including courageous individuals who champion anti-corruption efforts and countries working to fulfill their commitments to international anti-corruption standards,” Blinken said.

The other honorees are Ardian Dvorani of Albania; Diana Salazar of Ecuador; Sophia Pretrick of Micronesia; Juan Francisco Sandoval Alfaro of Guatemala; Ibrahima Kalil Gueye of Guinea; Anjali Bhardwaj of India; Dhuha Mohammed of Iraq; Mustafa Abdullah Sanalla of Libya; Victor Sotto of the Philippines; and Francis Ben Kaifala of Sierra Leone.

Executives of U.S. technology companies told lawmakers on February 23 that a recent breach of corporate and government networks was so sophisticated that a nation had to be behind it and said all the evidence points to Russia.

The hearing was the first to examine the hack, which was discovered by private security company FireEye in December. It was later revealed that hackers slipped malicious code into updates of network-management software made by the U.S. company SolarWinds, which was then downloaded by several branches of the U.S. government and several U.S. and European corporations.

U.S. intelligence officials and industry sources had previously blamed the intrusion on Russian hackers. Moscow has denied any involvement.

But the technology executives said that the evidence points to Russia as they described the precision, ambition, and scope of the attack.

"We asked ourselves how many engineers do we believe had worked on this collective effort. And the answer we came to was...at least 1,000, very skilled, capable engineers,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“We’ve seen substantial evidence that points to the Russian foreign intelligence agency and we have found no evidence that leads us anywhere else," Smith said.

Smith told the committee that the true scope of the intrusions is still unknown because most victims are not legally required to disclose attacks unless they involve sensitive information about individuals.

President Joe Biden's administration is weighing punitive measures against Russia, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it would be “weeks not months” before the U.S. responds.

“We have asked the intelligence community to do further work to sharpen the attribution that the previous administration made about precisely how the hack occurred, what the extent of the damage is, and what the scope and scale of the intrusion is,” Psaki said. “And we’re still in the process of working that through now.”

SEE ALSO:

Top Adviser Suggests Russia May See U.S. Response To SolarWinds Hack Within 'Weeks'

At least nine government agencies and 100 private companies were breached, but what was taken has not been revealed. U.S. government agencies affected include the Treasury, Justice, and Commerce departments, but the full list has not been publicly released.

Smith said there are victims around the world, including in Canada, Mexico, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Microsoft revealed in December that the hackers were able to gain access into its closely guarded source code but said they did not have permission to modify any code or engineering systems.

FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia told the Senate committee that his company has nearly 100 people working to study and contain the breach.

He said the hackers first installed malicious code in October 2019 but didn't activate it immediately in order to see if they could remain undetected. They then returned in March and began to steal the log-in credentials of people who were authorized to be on the networks so they could have a “secret key” to move around at will, Mandia said.

The Senate committee also heard from Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the CEO of SolarWinds, who took over the company after the hack occurred, and George Kurtz, the president and CEO of CrowdStrike, another leading security company.

Ramakrishna said his company still has not found how the hackers managed to slip malware in the middle of the software supply chain at the point where completed code is tailored to users' configurations.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers said a raid on the headquarters of a major opposition party in Georgia and the arrest of the party’s leader was “profoundly troubling” and called for his immediate release, along with all other political prisoners.

Two senators and two members of the House of Representatives issued a statement on February 23 after Nika Melia, the leader of the major opposition party in the South Caucasus nation -- the United National Movement (ENM) -- was detained when police stormed his party's offices in a dawn raid.

“The Georgian government’s decision to violently raid the United National Movement headquarters to arrest its leader, Nika Melia, and dozens of activists is profoundly troubling,” the statement said. “The corrupt use of Georgia’s law enforcement and judiciary to execute politically motivated actions jeopardizes what remains of Georgia’s democracy and its Euro-Atlantic path.”

The statement was released by Senator Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat-New Hampshire), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation; and representatives Adam Kinzinger (Republican-Illinois) and Gerry Connolly (Democrat-Virginia), co-chairs of the House Georgia Caucus.

They called for the immediate release of all political prisoners, including Melia and Giorgi Rurua, adding that all political parties in Georgia “must cease provocations and negotiate a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

More than a dozen people were injured as law enforcement raided the ENM headquarters, spraying what appeared to be chemical irritants into the offices where party leaders, as well as representatives of other opposition parties, had been shielding Melia for several days.

Melia was arrested over allegations that he incited violence at protests nearly two years ago. He has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.

SEE ALSO:

Five Things To Know About Georgia And The Political Crisis It's Slipping Toward

International rights group Amnesty International called the heavy use of force to take Melia into custody before a court has heard his appeal a troubling indicator.

"Arresting him, let alone violently, before the appeal has been considered shows the Georgian authorities’ flagrant disregard for the rule of law and authority and integrity of the judiciary, and suggests the arrest is politically motivated," Amnesty said in a statement.

Melia's arrest came days after Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia resigned following a disagreement over whether to take the prominent politician into custody. Gakharia had said that Melia's arrest was unacceptable if it threatened to fuel political divisions in the Caucasus country of 3.7 million people.

The political scene in Georgia has been on the brink of crisis since October elections dominated by the Georgian Dream party but which independent monitors say were marred by irregularities.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, Reuters, Apsny, OC Media, Interpressnews, and AFP

Amnesty International has withdrawn its recent designation of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's as a "prisoner of conscience" over his alleged advocacy of violence and discrimination and comments that included hate speech, but reiterated its determination to keep fighting for his release.

Denis Krivosheev, deputy director of Amnesty's Europe and Central Asia office, confirmed to RFE/RL in an e-mailed response on February 24 that the "internal decision" was made "in relation to comments [Navalny] made in the past" and that the decision "does not change our resolve to fight for his immediate release, and for an end to his politically motivated persecution by the Russian authorities.

"Some of these comments, which Navalny has not publicly denounced, reach the threshold of advocacy of hatred, and this is at odds with Amnesty's definition of a prisoner of conscience," Krivosheev said, without specifying which comments he was referring to.

Navalny was arrested at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after he arrived on January 17 from Berlin, where he had been recovering from a poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent in August that the 44-year-old lawyer says was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and carried out by Russian intelligence.

Krivosheev added that Navalny, whom the group named a prisoner of conscience after his arrest in Moscow last month, "has committed no crime" and that in spite of its decision regarding his status as a prisoner of conscience, "Amnesty delivered 200,000 signatures to the Russian authorities demanding Navalny's immediate release."

Navalny's anti-corruption organization has targeted many high-profile Russians, including high-ranking government officials.

In the course of his political career, Navalny has also come under criticism for his association with ethnic Russian nationalists and about statements seen as racist and dangerously inflammatory.

Still, Amnesty came under immediate criticism by political analysts and Navalny allies, who accused the rights group of caving to a pressure campaign by journalists connected to state-controlled media.

"It's shocking and shameful.... Navalny is deemed no longer to be a 'prisoner of conscience' because his views are now deemed 'hate speech'? I forgot that only woke pacifists can experience persecution," said Mark Galeotti, an expert and author on Russia.

The rights group's decision was first reported by U.S. journalist Aaron Mate on February 23 and was confirmed to Mediazona and The Insider by Aleksandr Artemyev, the rights watchdog's media manager for Russia and Eurasia.

Artemyev wrote that Amnesty decided to retract the designation "in light of new information" stemming from "old videos and social-media posts in which Navalny made controversial pronouncements."

The comments attributed to Navalny in the mid-2000s were not specified, but Artemyev said they were made as Navalny's activism and challenge to Putin was gaining momentum and that their reemergence "appears to be another tactic to delegitimize Navalny's work and criticism and to weaken public outcry about his detention."

But, he added, while it could have been part of a coordinated campaign "done not out of goodwill, but maliciously," Amnesty couldn't disregard "the fact that this time the arrow hit the target," Artemyev said.

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5 Things To Know About Russian Opposition Leader Aleksei Navalny

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Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said the "procedure for assigning and depriving AI status turned out to be extremely shameful.”

"In 2018, Amnesty International called me a prisoner of conscience. I declare that I am giving up this status now and in the future since it can be deprived under the pressure of Putin's state propaganda," added Aleksandr Golovach, a lawyer with the FBK who Amnesty said at the time was detained on "spurious charges of breaking a repressive law on public gatherings."

Navalny's arrest for failing to report to the Moscow prison service -- a violation of a suspended sentence related to a 2014 conviction for embezzlement that he and critics say was politically motivated -- sparked anti-government protests in hundreds of cities and led to thousands of arrests.

On February 2, Navalny's 3 1/2-year suspended sentence was converted to real jail time. His appeal was rejected on February 20, ensuring that Putin's biggest political rival will spend about 2 1/2 years in prison, considering time already spent in detention.

In a separate case heard the same day, Navalny was fined 850,000 rubles ($11,500) on charges of slandering a World War II veteran who had participated in a Kremlin-organized promotional video.

After Amnesty recognized Navalny as a prisoner of conscience on January 17, saying his arrest was "further evidence that Russian authorities are seeking to silence him," the rights watchdog reportedly began receiving letters of complaint from unknown sources.

Putin on February 24 signed into law bills that beef up fines for the financing of rallies and disobeying police in the wake of what the Kremlin has called "unsanctioned" protests in support of Navalny.

The new laws set fines for individuals found guilty of illegally financing a rally at up to 15,000 rubles ($200), while officials and organizations guilty of such actions will be fined up to 30,000 rubles ($400) and 100,000 rubles ($1,345), respectively.

Putin also signed a law that significantly increases fines for disobeying police and security forces.

With reporting by Mike Eckel, RFE/RL's Russian Service, Current Time, Meduza, and Mediazona

A UN special rapporteur has accused Iran of misleading denials and inadequate investigations after the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet after takeoff from Tehran's international airport in January 2020.

Agnes Callamard, a special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said in a 45-page letter on the findings of a six-month inquiry on February 23 that "Iran committed multiple human rights violations in shooting down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 and in the aftermath of the deadly attack."

"The inconsistencies in the official explanations seem designed to create a maximum of confusion and a minimum of clarity," Callamard said in the text, which was reportedly delivered to Iranian officials two months ago. "They seem contrived to mislead and bewilder."

After days of official denials following the crash, Iran admitted that its forces had inadvertently shot down the Kyiv-bound plane, killing all 176 people on board, after firing two missiles amid heightened tensions with the United States.

But Iran's civilian aviation authority in its final report from July 2020 cited "human error," saying a broken radar system created communication problems with a military unit.

“The Iranian government claims it has nothing to hide, yet it has failed to carry out a full and transparent investigation in line with its international obligations. As a result, many questions are left unresolved," the UN rapporteur said.

The majority of the victims were Iranians and Canadians, but Afghans, Britons, Swedes, and Ukrainians were also among the dead.

Ukraine said last month in connection with the first anniversary of the tragedy that all five of those governments would "hold Iran to account to deliver justice and make sure Iran makes full reparations to the families of the victims and affected countries."

Iran announced in December 2020 that the government had allocated $150,000 for the families of each of the victims -- an offer rejected by the Ukrainian and Canadian governments, as well as some of the families of the victims, who see it as an attempt to close the case and escape accountability.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) marked the anniversary of the crash by accusing Iranian authorities of harassing and intimidating the victims’ families instead of conducting a “transparent and credible” investigation.

Flight 752 was downed the same night that Iran launched a ballistic-missile attack that targeted U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Tehran's air defenses were on high alert in case of retaliation.

Iran's missile attack was in response to a U.S. drone strike that killed the powerful commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad five days earlier.

With reporting by dpa

Moldova's Constitutional Court on February 23 has blocked pro-EU President Maia Sandu's second attempt to nominate a prime minister, extending a standoff with pro-Russia legislators and hindering her effort to force early parliamentary elections.

Sandu had nominated Natalia Gavrilita unsuccessfully for a second time on February 11 despite parliament's earlier rejection of Gavrilita.

Moldova's legislature is dominated by lawmakers allied with Sandu's pro-Moscow predecessor, Igor Dodon.

The second nomination appeared intended to clear a path for Sandu to dissolve parliament and call early elections.

Sandu's former party, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), hopes a new vote would leave them stronger relative to Dodon's Socialists.

A U.S.-educated former adviser with the World Bank, Sandu defeated Dodon in November 2020 on a pledge to fight entrenched corruption and improve relations with the European Union.

Moldova is one of Europe’s poorest countries and is sharply divided between those who support closer ties with Russia and those who advocate stronger links to Brussels and neighboring EU member Romania.

Sandu has accused parliament of attempting to sabotage her presidency and says the current parliament cannot carry out her agenda.

Sandu has called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Moscow-backed separatist region of Transdniester, prompting the Kremlin to warn it could lead to "serious destabilization.”

Following their initial rejection of Gavrilita, Sandu rejected a Socialist attempt to nominate a rival candidate, Mariana Durlesteanu, as prime minister.

Socialist deputies appealed to the Constitutional Court after Sandu again put Gavrilita forward.

In its ruling, the Constitutional Court said Sandu should have consulted with parliamentary factions before nominating a new candidate.

Dodon has responded with a call for Sandu to "immediately" nominate a new candidate for prime minister, saying in a statement on Telegram that deputies are ready to "do whatever it takes to get out of the crisis quickly."

With reporting by Reuters and Interfax

The UN nuclear watchdog said on February 23 that it is "deeply concerned" that Iran secretly kept "undeclared nuclear material" at an "undeclared location" as the agency warned that Tehran continued to exceed "many limits" set by its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also confirmed in a pair of reports that Iran was already enriching uranium up to 20 percent purity, and that its enriched-uranium stockpile had reached 14 times the limit established by the 4-year-old Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA).

"The agency is deeply concerned that undeclared nuclear material may have been present at this undeclared location and that such nuclear material remains unreported by Iran under its safeguards agreement," the IAEA said.

Iran "has yet to provide answers" on the discovery of "anthropogenic uranium particles" found at two sites inspected last year.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi then reiterated that Iran "needs to give answers" on the traces "in places they shouldn't be." He said the process with Tehran "has not yielded positive results for now."

The IAEA's warnings followed condemnation hours earlier by Britain, France, and Germany of Tehran's decision to abandon a snap-inspections regime and reduce transparency this week as part of a mounting standoff over the fate of the JCPOA.

Iran confirmed on February 22 that it had ended its implementation of an Additional Protocol allowing for surprise inspections of nuclear-related sites.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also vowed "not to back down on the nuclear issue" and floated the possibility of escalating uranium enrichment to 60 percent, far above the 3.67-percent limit in the JCPOA and three times the 20 percent it announced a month ago.

Diplomatic maneuvering has intensified since Joe Biden was sworn in as U.S. president in January pledging to revive Washington's participation in the agreement, which the previous U.S. administration abandoned in 2018.

"We...deeply regret that Iran has started, as of today, to suspend the Additional Protocol and the transparency measures under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," the British, French, and German foreign ministers said in a joint statement.

"We urge Iran to stop and reverse all measures that reduce transparency and to ensure full and timely cooperation with the IAEA," they added.

Reuters quoted an unnamed senior diplomat on February 23 as saying Iran is producing around 15 kilograms a month of uranium enriched to 20 percent.

Grossi has laid out details of a deal he worked out with Iranian officials last weekend to preserve some monitoring for up to three months beyond Tehran's deadline for nixing the snap inspections.

He described a system whereby data and "key activities" would be monitored and stored but not made available until after the period in question.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said a recent law handed down by the hard-line parliament had gone into effect early on February 23 barring Iran from sharing surveillance footage of its nuclear facilities with the IAEA.

In a sign that the nuclear issue is further pitting hard-liners against President Hassan Rohani's administration, lawmakers in Iran's parliament on February 22 objected to the government's decision to allow the continued IAEA monitoring even under the modified regime.

The White House has said that its European allies are awaiting a response from Iran on an offer to host an informal meeting of current members of the JCPOA.

The United States and other governments have accused Iran of secretly trying to build a nuclear-weapons capability, a charge that Tehran has consistently rejected despite years of what the IAEA said was obfuscation and deception.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Residents of the North Caucasus region of Ingushetia are commemorating the victims of the wartime Soviet deportation of Ingush and Chechens from the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Thousands of people, including the region's leader, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, lawmakers, government members, and public organizations, gathered near the memorial called Nine Towers in Ingushetia's largest city, Nazran, on February 23 to honor the victims of the deportation.

Commemoration ceremonies and mass prayers were also held in Ingushetia's mosques and cemeteries.

From February 23 to March 9, 1944, Soviet authorities deported almost all Chechens and Ingush -- an estimated 650,000 people -- to Central Asia, claiming they were collaborating with Nazi Germany.

In his address to the Ingush people on February 23, Kalimatov called Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's decision to deport Ingush and Chechen people "monstrous" and praised those who survived the deportation for the "ability to preserve their values, culture and traditions."

As many as half of the deportees died either on the journey or due to the harsh conditions in which they were forced to live.

In 1957, four years after Stalin's death, the survivors were allowed to return to the North Caucasus.

In neighboring Chechnya, in 2012, Moscow-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov moved the Day of Grief and Remembrance from February 23 to May 10, the anniversary of the burial of his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in a bombing in Grozny in 2004.

In a statement on February 23, Kadyrov condemned Stalin for the deportation.

Last year, for the first time since moving the date, Kadyrov and his government commemorated the deportation's victims, but this year the date was not officially marked with any public events.

Thousands of opposition supporters have gathered in downtown Yerevan for the latest protest demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's resignation following Armenians' bitter defeat to Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The march blocked a number of nearby streets in the city center before participants dispersed as "nonstop" opposition protests and civil disobedience continue in the Caucasus state of around 3 million people.

It was organized by the Homeland Salvation Movement, an umbrella alliance of more than a dozen opposition groups calling for an interim government and new elections.

The same group mobilized protesters earlier in the day in an effort to prevent Pashinian from entering the government building, which was surrounded by police forces.

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Armenian Opposition Protesters Detained In Yerevan

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More than 50 people were reportedly detained, including Homeland Salvation Movement members.

They have held at least three protests over the past week and have called for another demonstration on February 23.

Protests broke out in Armenia in November after Pashinian signed a Russian-brokered cease-fire that brought an end to 44 days of fierce fighting over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian forces had been largely defeated by Azerbaijan's Turkish-backed military in the recent fighting.

Under the terms of the cease-fire, Pashinian ceded control over some territory in Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan that had been occupied by ethnic Armenian forces since the early 1990s.

Pashinian has rebuffed the pressure to step down and defended the cease-fire as the only way to prevent Armenians from losing all of Nagorno-Karabakh as well.

With reporting by AP

A court in North Macedonia has found five ethnic Albanians guilty of terrorism in the retrial of a nine-year-old quintuple murder case that sent shock waves across the country and prompted speculation of political meddling.

Agim Ismailovic, Afrim Ismailovic, and Alil Demiri were sentenced to life in prison for the killing of five young ethnic Macedonians in April 2012, while two other defendants, Fejzi Aziri and Haki Aziri, were sentenced to 15 and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were found guilty of aiding the others in committing the murders.

They had all originally been sentenced to life in the first trial in June 2014.

Only Agim Ismailovic was present in court, as the others -- believed to be hiding in Kosovo -- were tried in absentia.

Delivering the verdict, presiding Judge Ognen Stavrev said that they were guilty of the crime of "terrorism."

"This was not a regular criminal act, this was a monstrous, sadistic killing, taking lives of children who had just stepped into maturity," Stavrev told the court as he read the verdict.

A sixth defendant, Samir Ljuta, was acquitted after the prosecution withdrew all charges earlier this year, citing a lack of evidence.

The five young Macedonians were killed with automatic rifles and a handgun near a lake on the outskirts of Skopje during Orthodox Easter celebrations in 2012.

Lawyers for the defendants, who pleaded not guilty at the retrial, said they would appeal the ruling.

Prosecutor Fatime Fetai said that the sentences were "adequate," but the defense reiterated claims made during the trial that the case was fabricated and that the evidence was planted by the police.

"We were not surprised by Samir Ljuta's acquittal, but we are surprised that the rest [of the defendants] were not acquitted as well," lawyer Naser Raufi told the court.

The bodies of Filip Slavkovski, Aleksandar Nakjevski, Cvetanco Acevski, and Kire Trickovski -- all aged between 18 and 20 -- were discovered near Smilkovci Lake in 2012.

The young men appeared to had been lined up and shot execution-style. The body of Borce Stevkovski, a 45-year-old fisherman, was found nearby.

The case sparked violent protests in the capital of North Macedonia, a country whose population is 25 percent ethnic Albanian.

It also triggered speculation that the accused had been framed by the Balkan country's government, led at the time by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

A first trial found the defendants guilty in June 2014 and sentenced to life in prison -- the longest possible sentence for terrorism.

But the convictions triggered protests by ethnic Albanians, and violent clashes ensued between riot police and demonstrators in Skopje.

In 2015, Social Democratic opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who is now prime minister, hinted that some of a trove of secretly wiretapped conversations that his party was releasing could possibly back claims that those convicted had been framed for political reasons.

In 2018, the prosecution asked the Supreme Court for the life sentences to be annulled, citing new circumstances and questionable evidence in the case.

But the retrial, which started in May 2018, failed to come up with enough proof and change the course of the case, despite fresh testimony by several high officials, including Zaev.

With reporting by Balkan Insight

Citizens and security forces have clashed in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province, a day after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) opened fire on cross-border fuel traders, killing as many as 10 of them.

Five people are reported to have been injured in the violence on February 23 in the city of Saravan.

There was no immediate official confirmation of the clashes.

The IRGC had attempted to stop cross-border fuel trading by digging holes along the border crossing, but reportedly encountered protests by men who carry fuel over the border to make a living.

The IRGC then opened fire on the protesters, killing and injuring several of them, according to reports that RFE/RL could not independently verify.

Reports suggest that on February 23 some of the families of those killed stormed the governor's office in Saravan and clashed with police.

The European-based Campaign of Baluch Activists said several protesters had been injured and that police used tear gas to disperse them. At least one police vehicle was reportedly set on fire by the protesters.

Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran's poorest provinces, is a volatile area near Iran's borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan where drug smugglers and militant groups operate.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Kazakh activist Qanat Zhaqypov has gone on trial in the Almaty region for having links with the banned unregistered opposition Koshe (Street) party.

Zhaqypov told the court after the trial began on February 23 that he was one of the organizers of the Koshe party and actively participated in its activities until it was officially banned in May 2020.

"After the ban, I stopped any connection with the party and continued to propagate democratic values by other means not linked to the party," Zhaqypov said.

Journalists were not allowed in the courtroom due to coronavirus restrictions, and were provided with an opportunity to follow the trial online.

Zhaqypov's supporters, who also were not allowed to attend the trial, protested inside the court's hall, but left the site after officials promised them that they would be able to follow the trial online when its resumes on March 3.

A day earlier, a court in the central city of Qaraghandy sentenced another Kazakh activist, Asqar Nurmaghanov, to 18 months of "freedom limitation" -- a parole-like restriction -- after a court found him guilty of having ties with the Koshe party.

Kazakh authorities banned the party for having links with another outlawed grouping, the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement.

DVK is led by Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former head of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank and an outspoken critic of the Kazakh government. Kazakh authorities labeled DVK extremist and banned the group in March 2018.

Several activists across the Central Asian nation have been handed "freedom limitation" sentences for their involvement in the activities of the Koshe Party and DVK, and for taking part in rallies organized by the two groups.

Human rights groups have said that Kazakhstan’s law on public gatherings contradicts international standards as it requires preliminary permission from authorities to hold rallies and envisions prosecution for organizing and participating in unsanctioned rallies even though the nation’s constitution guarantees its citizens the right of free assembly.