Journalist Reznik and ecologist Vitishko to receive 100,000 roubles each from "Open Russia"

Today, an official launch of the project of financial support of political prisoners was announced. It is executed within the human rights movement "Open Russia", headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former co-owner of the "Yukos" oil company.

The list of political prisoners was defined by the expert's board of the 24 well-known Russian rights defenders, namely: Lyudmila Alekseeva, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group; Igor Kalyapin, the head of the "Committee for the Prevention of Torture"; Oleg Orlov, a board member of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial"; a political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin; and a journalist Vera Chelischeva.

According to the adopted procedure, those recognized as political prisoners by more than half members of the above board, will receive help in the amount of 100,000 roubles, in particular, the journalist from Rostov-on-Don Sergey Reznik and the ecologist from Krasnodar Evgeny Vitishko.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that journalist and blogger Sergey Reznik accused of false denunciation and insult of the authorities, was sentenced to three years in prison on January 22. Evgeny Vitishko, an activist of the "Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus", is serving his term in the Tambov Region, awarded to him under the case of damaging the fence around the territory, known as the "dacha" of Alexander Tkachov, who was then the governor of the Krasnodar Territory.

The list of already approved 22 political prisoners also includes the oppositionists, convicted under the so-called "Bolotnaya case", the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, recently sentenced by the court in Rostov-on-Don to 20 years in prison on charges of terrorism, and Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian servicewoman, accused of involvement in a murder and illegal border crossing.

The main idea of the financial support is to enable prisoners' relatives to go and meet then at their detention, the website of the "Open Russia" reports.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.