Dmitry Medvedev instructs Russia's GPO to look into verdicts against political prisoners

Dmitry Medvedev has instructed the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) of the Russian Federation to analyze the justification of sentences of prisoners from the list prepared by the opposition. This was reported by the official website of the Russian President.

Organizers of the rally "For Fair Elections" have passed to Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, the list containing 39 persons, whom they treat as persons convicted for political reasons. Charges against 6 persons from the list are related to the events in Northern Caucasus and southern Russia, and charges against other 5 persons to the riots in Manege Square in Moscow in December 2010.

The General Prosecutor's Office is instructed till April 1 "to analyze in due course the lawfulness and justification of judgments of conviction in regard to "citizens whose names were included into the list of 'political prisoners' drawn up by the opposition", the "ITAR-TASS" reports.

General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika was appointed to be responsible for analyzing the justification of court's judgments against 32 Russian citizens, the "Life News" reports.

The list published on the website of the Russian President includes names of convicted persons accused of crimes related to the events in Northern Caucasus. Thus, the list mentions the name of Sergey Arakcheev, ex-officer of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), who fought in Chechnya and who was accused of murdering Chechen civilians and was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.

Besides, the list includes the names of Mikhail Klevachev and Vladimir Vlasov, the convicted persons accused of blowing up the train "Grozny-Moscow", Zara Murtazalieva and Lors Khamiev, the natives of Chechnya accused of terrorism, and Igor Berezyuk, Kirill Unchuk, Ruslan Khubaev, Leonid Panin, and Alexander Kozevin, the defendants in the criminal case on the riots in Manege Square.