Human Rights Council under President asks to release Professor Savva

The Council on Human Rights (CHR) under the Russian President has addressed its appeal to the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika asking to promote a change of the freedom restriction measure applied as custody to Professor Mikhail Savva from the Kuban State University, the director of grant programmes of the Southern Regional Resource Centre (SRRC) for another one not related with custody.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Mikhail Savva, who is also a member of the Public Oversight Commission of the Krasnodar Territory for monitoring the observance of human rights in jails, was detained on April 12 on suspicion of fraud.

The above appeal notes that on November 5-6 the members of the CHR Sergey Krivenko, Mara Polyakova, Ilya Shablinskiy and Andrei Yurov visited Krasnodar with the aim to observe Mr Savva's trial. They came to the conclusion that there are no objective grounds for placing Mikhail Savva into custody.

"It should be noted that Mikhail Savva's criminal prosecution is held at the background of an extremely adverse situation with civil society institutions in the Krasnodar Territory," the appeal reads.

Andrei Yurov has stated at a press conference in Moscow that Mikhail Savva's case has already caused a huge reputational damage to the entire Krasnodar Territory on the eve of the Olympics.