Police question radio chief editor in connection with new investigation against opposition leader

Alexey Venediktov, the chief editor of the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow, announced today on Twitter that police came to the station's office to question him as part of a criminal investigation against the opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Officers inquired about the publication of Navalny's blog posts on Echo's website.

On May 19, 2016, former Interior Ministry investigator Pavel Karpov said police had initiated a criminal case against Alexey Navalny for slander—specifically for asserting that the investigator himself was involved in the death of Russian lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.

Previously, the official spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, announced the Committee’s intention to verify Karpov’s claim that head of Hermitage Capital William Browder was involved in the murder of Sergey Magnitsky. According to Karpov, this claim was the result of the film “Operation ‘Rain’: Navalny’s Secret Correspondence,” produced by the journalist Evgeny Popov.

In 2015, Moscow’s Municipal Court ruled to fine William Browder and Duncan Jamieson, a managing partner at British law firm Firestone, a total of 8 million rubles ($121,000) for slandering Karpov, who had already been awarded 100,000 rubles as a result of a ruling by a separate Moscow court. Karpov’s similar claim at a court in London was rejected.