Russia’s top prosecutor slams illegal detention

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – February 12, 2014) More than 14,000 Russians have been illegally prosecuted in the last three years, according to Prosecutor General Yury Chaika.

“People are sitting in jail illegally for years,” RIA Novosti quoted Chaika as saying during a planned address before the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

According to Chaika, 14,261 people were illegally placed under investigation by the Investigative Committee in the last three years.

The Investigative Committee, headed by Alexander Bastrykin, was separated from the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2011 and has since become a powerful body.

Chaika’s comments on Wednesday were a rare recognition by a government official of a problem widely cited by government critics and human rights activists.

A total of 130,000 people are currently held in pre-trial detention across Russia, according to official statistics from the Federal Prison Service.