Law enforcers announce criminal case against "Memorial"*

A criminal case has been opened against employees of the "Memorial" Society under the article on rehabilitation of Nazism, law enforcement sources have reported. There was no notification about the case; and investigators failed to voice out the claims, human rights defenders from the "Memorial" have informed.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 28, 2021, the Supreme Court (SC) of Russia ruled to liquidate the "International Memorial" and its subdivisions; on February 28, 2022, the SC's Appellate Board approved the ruling.

According to a law enforcement source, the new case under the article "Rehabilitation of Nazism" is based on the suspicion that the "Memorial" had included people who collaborated with the German fascists during the Great Patriotic War (WW II) into the lists of repressed persons. "Investigators believe that a number of 'Memorial' employees equated collaborators with victims of political repression and disseminated deliberately false information about the USSR's activities during WW II by using mass media," the TASS quoted investigators as stating.

"No one has received any official documents or requests at the 'Memorial'. We don't know how true this information is," the "Memorial" Society asserts in its Telegram channel.

Let us remind you that in September 2022, the court arrested the office of the liquidated "International Memorial" that had been donated to another organization. Human rights defenders then treated this arrest as an attempt to raider seizure of property. In October 2022, the court invalidated the deal on the transfer of the building to the Research and Education Centre. On February 8, 2023, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision to transfer the building of the "International Memorial" to the state.