The Neo-Nazi groups threaten State and Public Officials

In March 2008, radical right websites started to circulate a list of Chief Justices, including their home addresses and personal information.

The list later expanded to include personal data on high-ranking procuracy officials, MIA (MVD) employees, as well as public figures and scientists who work on the problem of xenophobia in Russia. The list already includes about 50 names. A number of radical right websites posted the web-link to the list, accompanied by direct threats of violence and even murder.

In the past years, the high-profile people who work to resist the rise of radical nationalism in Russia continued to experience threats of violence and physical reprisals. The well-known cases included the murder of an ethnologist Nikolai Girenko, the assaults on hate-crime experts in Saint Petersburg, the murder of a judge and a series of attempts on the lives of the court and procuracy employees in Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region. The ultra-right radicals are suspected of committing these crimes, and several radical organizations have claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Many poorly hidden threats of violence against court officials and law enforcers were voiced at the Moscow radical rally on April 19, 2008.

Since we believe that such threats pose real danger to the people included in this list, as well as their families, the SOVA Center requested the General Prosecutor's Office to conduct an investigation of the matter. The Prosecutor's Office accepted SOVA's application on April 21, 2008.

On April 24, 2008, Tatyana Chernyshova, the interim head of the department of media relations of the General Prosecutor's Office, announced that an investigation had begun already. "The investigation is ongoing, as we received a similar appeal, based on the same list, via the internet reception room of the General Prosecutor's official web-site," explained Ms. Chernyshova.