He United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turkexpressed concern about the arrest of the opposition politician and journalist Vladimir Kara Murzaaccused in Russia of cooperate with “a NATO country”.
“UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk is concerned about the continued detention of opposition politician and journalist Vladimir Kara Murza since April 2022,” his office said on Twitter.
Turk called for “fair procedures to be respected” and the journalist’s right to defense, who has already added several charges since he was arrested in April, initially for disobeying a police officer.
The opponent, who faces a penalty of up to 20 years in prison for being seen by the Kremlin as a foreign agent and by “cooperate with NATO countries”, was arrested in April next to his house after the chain CNN broadcast an interview in which criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Our client has been accused of speaking out and criticizing the Russian authorities on three occasions at public events in Lisbon, Helsinki and Washington. These speeches did not threaten Russia in any way, they were public criticism,” said Vladimir Kara Murza’s lawyer, Vadim Prokhrovquoted by the Russian news agency TASS.
“These interventions did not threaten Russia’s security at all, they were public criticism,” he added, specifying that Kara-Mourza denied these accusations.
The Russian journalist openly questioned the Kremlin for years and was close friends with the late liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in Moscow. He survived two near-fatal poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, attributed by a portal investigation bellingcat to the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia.
Vladimir Kara-Murza he had already been the subject of two other criminal cases. In April, he was arrested in Moscow after having strongly criticized the offensive in Ukraine, in particular on social media, and accused of “spread false information” about the Russian army, a crime punishable by ten years in prison.
Later, in August, during his imprisonment, he was also accused of having worked for an organization designated “undesirable” in Russia, organizing in 2021 in Moscow a conference on the political prisoners.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, is one of the last Russian opposition figures still in the country.
He European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned Moscow for annulling the candidacy of Vladimir Kara-Mourza to elections in Russia for having dual nationality: Russian and British.
The opponent has been a Russian citizen since birth and obtained British citizenship after moving to the UK with his mother when he was 15 years old.
(With information from Europa Press and AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com