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Russian Prosecutor General's Office condemns lawyer's call for sharia courts

Khasavov may be stripped of the lawyer's status
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, April 26 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia's Office of the Prosecutor General has condemned the calls of a Moscow-based lawyer Dagit Khasavov to introduce sharia courts for Moslems in Russia, since the Moslem community in this country allegedly does not trust the regular civil courts.

Khasavov said in a recent interview with the REN-TV channel that unless the authorities in Moscow City legalize the sharia courts, the rancorous Moslems "will drown the city in blood."

“His declarations can be considered as appeals for conducting an extremist activity,” Marina Gridneva, the official spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office told Itar-Tass.

She indicated that Khasavov may be stripped of the lawyer's status and as for the channel that put the interview with him on air, the Prosecutor General's Office has issued an official warning to the Director General of the REN holding company.

Gridneva also said that Moscow City prosecutors has opened in inquiry into the airing of an episode by REN-TV April 24, which discussed the setting up of a Moslem Union for the defense of Islamic law and rehabilitation of sharia courts.

"A research done by the federal organization called the Russian Institute of Cultural Studies has established that the proclamations made by the persons featured in the report aimed to fan ethnic strife and to humiliate a person or a group of people along the criterion of their attitude to Islam and could be regarded as calls for carrying out extremist activity,” she said.

In addition, “the episode might be considered as an instance of propaganda of superiority of a group of individuals on the exclusive grounds of their religious affiliation,” Gridneva said.

In the light of it, the episode has been submitted for inspection to Moscow City’s Investigations Committee, which is expected to produce its legal assessment.

Also, a petition has been filed with the Moscow City branch of the Justice Ministry on violations of the federal law on lawyers and the Code of Professional Ethics.

In the future, an issue of revoking Dagir Khasavov’s status of a lawyer may spring to the agenda.

In the meantime, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said its experts are scrutinizing Khasavov’s interview to see if it contained the calls for fomenting ethnic strife.