HRC "Memorial" fined by court 300,000 roubles

Five materials posted by the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" about political prisoners, in particular, about Oleg Sentsov, Alexander Kolchenko, Nikolai Klykh and Sergey Litvinov, were not labelled as materials posted by the organization recognized as a foreign agent, the court has stated and fined the HRC by 300,000 roubles. The representatives of the "Memorial" do not agree with the court judgement.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in 2014 the HRC "Memorial", which deals with the defence of human rights, including in the Caucasus, was put by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the registry of foreign agents. The HRC treats the conclusions of the inspectors, who had checked its activities that they are political in nature, erroneous; however, all the attempts to appeal against the MoJ's decision have failed.

Of the above five publications, three relate to Southern Russia. Thus, one of them covered the case of the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and the environmentalist Alexander Kolchenko, who were sentenced in August 2015 by a court in Rostov-on-Don to 20 and 10 years, respectively.

Another material of the HRC tells about attempts to achieve the extradition of Alexander Klykh, a citizen of Ukraine, who was accused of killing, during the first Chechen campaign, Russian soldiers and sentenced on May 19 to 22 years in prison. Finally, another publication tells about the case Sergey Litvinov, a citizen of Ukraine, who was found guilty on April 20 by a court of the Rostov Region on charges of robbery committed in South-Eastern Ukraine, and sentenced him to 8.5 years in colony.

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