Person of the Week: Leonid Razvozzhayev

posted 10 Apr 2017, 09:43 by Rights in Russia   [ updated 10 Apr 2017, 09:44 ]
On 7 April 2017 Leonid Razvozzhayev was released from a prison in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, after serving a 4 1/2-year sentence for allegedly organizing protest rallies in 2012, RFE/RL reported. RFE/RL notes that a Russian court had found Razvozzhayev "guilty of helping to organize a protest on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square in May 2012 and of attempts to organize similar rallies across Russia." Razvozzhayev has alleged that in 2012 he was abducted by Russian security agents whilst he was in Ukraine and taken to Russia where he was remanded in custody before being put on trial. For the next two years Leonid Razvozzhayev will be on probation, subject to monitoring by the police and will not be allowed to attend public gatherings or events. RFE/RL reports that Razvozzhayev told the publication "he does not yet know what he is going to do now but that he would like to contribute to the democratization of Russia and reforms in the country's corrections system."

Before his arrest, trial and imprisonment, Leonid Razvozzhayev was a member of the Left Front political grouping and an aide to the member of the State Duma Ilya Ponomarev.

Amnesty International has condemned the prosecution and subsequent conviction and imprisonment of participants in the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protest on a number of occasions. In a statement issued on 21 February 2014, John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International, said: . “What happened on Bolotnaya Square on 6 May 2012 was not the quelling of a riot, but the crushing of a protest. The Bolotnaya trial has not exposed orchestrated violence, but rather a criminal justice system that is entirely malleable to the dictates of its political mastersю”

Photo of Leonid Razvozzhayev: Kasparov.ru

Sources:
Russian Opposition Activist Released From Prison After Serving Term, RFE/RL, 7 April 2017
'Russia: Guilty verdict in Bolotnaya case - injustice at its most obvious,' Amnesty International, 21 February 2014
'Leonid Razvozzhayev,' Wikipedia
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