Navalny threatens with a new “Magnitsky list” if the information on the torture of opposition activist is confirmed

Alexei Navalny file photo

(Interfax – October 22, 2012) Alexei Navalny, the founder of an anti-corruption fund, said the opposition will make a new “Magnitsky list” if the information on the torture of opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev is confirmed.

“If the torture is confirmed, the Razvozzhayev case should become the first case on which we will do such serious work. We will take specific people who were in charge of specific stages of the investigation and all these people will be put on the Magnistky list,” Navalny told Interfax on Monday.

“I will raise this issue [with the opposition Coordination Council] and I am confident that I will get support. If he was tortured, all these people will be punished,” he said.

“If we just analyze the facts, we can say that it’s most likely true that Razvozzhayev was tortured, Navalny said. “This all looks like crude fabrication of a criminal case, it’s just absurd. They have decided to make a case similar to the Stalin-era ‘doctors’ case,'” Navalny said.

“I believe that all people who do things like that, beginning from Ukraine to possible torture, a strange trial, and all these statements have already put themselves on lists similar to the Magnitsky list,” Navalny said.

He said this issue will be the first issue to be raised in the opposition Coordination Council after its formation.

Razvozzhayev was put on the federal wanted persons list on Oct. 18.

Razvozzhayev has been arrested by court at the request of the Main Investigations Department of the Investigations Committee in connection with the criminal case opened on the basis of the preparations for the organization of mass riots in Moscow and other regions of Russia following a probe into the facts stated in the film “Anatomy of Protest-2.”

The day after information on Razvozzhayev’s detention was reported, a video of police officers leading Razvozzhayev out of the court building was posted on the Internet. When Razvozzhayev saw journalists, he shouted: “Tell them I was tortured! I was tortured for two days, I was abducted in Ukraine!.”

In the meantime, Vladimir Markin said Razvozzhayev had contacted the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee on Oct. 21 and said he was willing to turn himself in.

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