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Police search apartments of Left Front activists within investigation of the Bolotnaya Square riots case

This time, investigators came to the leader of the Left Front’s Moscow branch, Vasily Kuzmin

The police have staged another round of searches under May 6, 2012 Bolotnaya Square riots case. This time, investigators came to the leader of the Left Front’s Moscow branch, Vasily Kuzmin. He was immediately taken to the Investigations Committee to be interrogated. The opposition activists’ lawyers attribute increased activity of investigators to their desperate attempts to fill the gaps in the body of evidence.

After a three-hour search of Kuzmin’s apartment, he has taken to the Investigations Committee, Sergei Vlasov, a coordinator of RosUznik (an organization offering legal assistance to opposition activists), told the Novye Izvestia newspaper. The interrogation lasted till five p.m. and the man was let go in the status of witness.

Yesterday’s visit to Denis Kuraishi, a Left Front activist and informal bodyguard of its leader Sergei Udaltsov, took place on the background of a loud scandal, writes the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper. As Kuraishi was not at home at the moment, the investigators took his small daughters and placed them with children’s services for several hours. His six-year-old girl was taken from home, where she was in the company of her elder brother, and the elder girl was taken from school. The girls were kept at the local police department for several hours and then returned to Kuraishi’s wife. “It is an utter disregard of the law,” Sergei Vlasov said in comment of the police actions. The lawyers of those involved in the Bolotnaya Square case demand that the case be sent back to the prosecutor’s office as being inconsistent.

In the meantime, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the case of 12 people who are accused of being involved in the Bolotnaya Square riots on May 6, 2012 had been submitted to Zamoskvoretsky district court. Eight of these twelve are accused of the use of force against policemen during the riots, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper writes. Three others are accused only of taking part in the riots, and one - Maria Baronova - of sedition. Earlier, two more persons were sentenced in this case. Maxim Luzyanin, who admitted his participation in riots and attacking a policeman, was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison, while Konstantin Lebedev, a supposed instigator of the riots, was given a suspended sentence.

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