United States deeply concerned about Russia’s intolerance of free speech

The US Secretary of State, Antony blink, said on Saturday that his country is “deeply concerned” for the Russia’s growing intolerance of free speech, on the sixth anniversary of the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

Outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, Nemtsov was shot and killed on a Moscow bridge near the Kremlin on February 27, 2015..

“In remembering Nemtsov, we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms“Blinken said in a statement.

“We remain deeply concerned about the growing intolerance of the Russian government towards all forms of independent expression.», He stressed.

Several thousand Russians, accompanied by Western diplomats, gathered in Moscow to mark the anniversary, laying flowers on a makeshift memorial at the site where Nemtsov was killed by four bullets.

In 2017, a court found a former Chechen security force officer guilty of murdering Nemtsov and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Four other men were found guilty of participating in the murder.

But the murdered politician’s family and supporters insist that authorities failed to bring brains to justice.

Blinken paid tribute to Nemtsov as a man who “dedicated his life to building a free and democratic Russia”.

“Those who demonstrate to defend their freedoms and democracy in Russia continue to be targeted and murdered,” he said, stressing that “the Russian people deserve better”.

Alexei Navalny was transferred to a prison

The Russian opposition leader was transferred this Friday from the preventive prison where he had been since mid-January to a general penitentiary center, as reported by his lawyer, Vadim Kobzev.

“Navalny was transferred in stages (etapirovan) from pretrial detention number oneFrom Moscow, Kobzev reported on his Twitter account.

The transfer takes place after the Russian justice dismissed on February 20 the appeal presented by Navalny’s lawyers against the sentence of 3.5 years in prison pronounced against the opponent for a former criminal case of fraud and money laundering.

As tradition dictates, the prisoner, like his family and his lawyers, will not know his new fate until your transfer is complete.

Convicts in this country are usually transported for days or weeks in special wagons, a process known as “etapirovanie” and which is strongly criticized by human rights defenders for its lack of humanity.

The move can take weeks or even months, since distances in Russia can reach thousands of kilometers, which is why inmates make stops and posts in special preventive prisons distributed throughout the national penitentiary geography.

During this process, detainees remain incommunicadoWhile the law does not oblige the authorities to inform families of their whereabouts until they reach their new destination.

At the time, the leader of the punk group Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokónnikova, was held incommunicado for 26 days on the way to the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk.

As he had been in pre-trial detention since he was arrested on his return from Germany on January 17, and also served ten months of house arrest, the opponent must serve a little over two and a half years in prison.

The prison sentence imposed at the end of January massive protests across the country, in which thousands of people have been arrested.

The European Union announced this week that it would adopt new sanctions against Russia for the sentencing of Navalny, who was poisoned in August 2020 in Siberia with the chemical agent Novichok, after which he was in a coma for two weeks. and a half in a German. clinical.

Navalny accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of having ordered the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) to assassinate him.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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