MOSCOW, October 19 (Itar-Tass) – Moscow City’s Basmanny district court has authorized arrest of one more oppositionist who took an active part in the May 6 public action in downtown Moscow, which eventually grew over into clashes with the police, the court’s press secretary Yekaterina Korotova told Itar-Tass.
“The court entertained the investigator’s petition and authorized custody for Sergei Krivov until December 18,” she told Itar-Tass.
Krivov is an aide to Sergei Udaltsov, the coordinator of the Left-Wing Front off-parliamentary opposition movement.
While passing the decision, the court agreed with the apprehensions of the defense that Krivov may go into hiding or impede investigation in some other way.
According to the investigators, Krivov was among the demonstrators during the May 6 action on Bolotnaya Square who tried to break through the police cordon. While doing this, he grabbed a rubber baton from the hands of a policeman and struck him with it.
He is charged with the offenses qualified in Article 212 and Article 318 of the Russian Criminal Code, which cite participation in mass disorders and violence against law enforcement officers.
Spokespeople for the Investigations Committee said earlier they had irrefutable evidence on Krivov’s complicity in the aforesaid offense.
He became the eighteenth persons detained in connection with the criminal case pertaining to disorders on Bolotnaya Square.
The Investigations Committee is rounding up investigation of a case involving 16 defendants accused of involvement in the Bolotnaya Square riot.
The case of one suspect, Maksim Luzyanin, was submitted to court at the end of last week.
In addition to the seventeen men in question, a female participant in the action has been placed on a wanted list.
The May 6 action of the opposition on Bolotnaya Square, located in a stone’s throw from the Kremlin on the opposite bank of the Moskva River, was authorized by the Mayoralty.
In the course of the action, the protesters made an attempt to break through the police cordon. Some of them threw glass bottles and fires at the police and offered active physical resistance while the policemen tried to detain them.
A number of demonstrators went as far as the attempts to rip protective helmets off the policemen’s heads.
More than 400 people were detained on that day. About 30 policemen were wounded and several dozen people were detained.