Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Mikhail Khodorkovsky,Pussy Riot
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky rose to wealth of $15 billion through development of Siberian oil fields as the head of Yukos. The oil magnate,who backed an opposition party,was jailed in 2003. Out finally,Khodorkovsky has said he will not enter politics. Maria Alyokhina (25) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova,24,of punk protest band Pussy Riot,on Monday became the next two people to benefit from Putins amnesty. Jailed in March 2012,they called it a PR stunt.
Greenpeace protesters
The call for amnesty is expected to pave the way for a possible Christmas return home of a 30-strong Greenpeace crew,including US environment campaigner Peter Willcox,who protested against Arctic oil drilling and was detained on charges of piracy. Twenty-eight campaigners and two freelance journalists were on board the Greenpeace protest ship when they were taken into Russian custody in September,after two activists tried to scale a Barents Sea oil platform owned by Russian state-run energy company Gazprom. Only four of the detainees are Russians.
Dmitry Litvinov
Litvinov,51,who holds dual US and Swedish citizenship,was one of 30 people on a Greenpeace icebreaker detained in September for mounting a protest to draw attention to oil drilling in Arctic Sea. Litvinov holds the distinction of being a third-generation political prisoner. His grandfather,Lev Kopelev,was imprisoned in Stalins Gulag; his father,Pavel Litvinov,was arrested for participating in the 1968 Red Square demonstration to protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring. He was released on bail on November 22.
Leonid Razvozzhayev
Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev who,in true Stalinist traditions,was kidnapped in a foreign country,smuggled back to Russia,and tortured to extract his confession,is under investigation for his alleged role in organising unsanctioned,violent protests in Moscow in 2012. He was also charged with armed robbery in connection with a 15-year-old incident in Siberia,with illegal border-crossing and making a false crime report. In March,he was also charged with making false accusations against an investigator,saying he had illegally pressured him.
Mikhail Kosenko
Kosenko,38,is charged with assaulting a police officer and participating in mass riots. His trial was one part of a larger case stemming from a protest on May 6,2012,when a march against Putin whose inauguration for a third term was scheduled for the next day turned violent,just across the river from the Kremlin. So far,28 people have been charged,with the state presenting the case as a planned conspiracy. A court has ordred that Kosenko be confined to a psychiatric ward indefinitely making him the first victim of punitive psychiatry since the Soviet era.
