Ministry of Internal Affairs: there are from 100 to 150 Russian-language extremist sites on the Internet

The head of the Bureau of Special Technical Events of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Boris Miroshnikov, said that, according to the Bureau, the Internet supports from 100 to 150 Russian-language sites that promote the ideas of terrorism and extremism.

According to the chief, many extremist sites are based on servers in foreign countries. Over the past months, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has sent 65 requests (48 to the United States and 17 to Europe) to foreign partners asking them to take the necessary measures to close them. No positive responses have been received so far.

According to B. Miroshnikov, it is necessary to develop uniform criteria for recognizing information resources as “terrorist” and “extremist”, which “will facilitate the fight against them.”

Please note that the lack of response from “foreign partners” to such requests is quite understandable: often, in order to close a website hosted by a foreign provider, a court decision is necessary to recognize the organization hosting these materials as extremist. For example, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan resorted to this practice. Unfortunately, this is the only case known to us. Typically, Russian law enforcement agencies do not find signs of extremism even in the activities of openly neo-Nazi groups.

Sources

• Sad struggle // Kasparov.ru. 2007. March 1.