Searches are underway in Nizhny Novgorod

On August 28, 2007, at the end of the meeting of the regional anti-terrorist commission, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, Valery Shantsev, announced that all youth associations in the region would be checked for involvement in extremist activities.

It should be noted that pressure on opposition organizations has recently increased in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In particular, on August 29, the police raided the office of the Foundation for Tolerance. During the search, 4 processors were confiscated for an examination of software licenses.

Fund employees believe that the reason for the check was the fund's connection with Stanislav Dmitrievsky , head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, closed in 2006.

On August 30, police officers, who presented a decision to conduct a comprehensive audit of financial and economic activities, conducted a search in the Nizhny Novgorod editorial office of Novaya Gazeta. The search was attended by the head of the UBOP department for combating extremist activities Maxim Bedyrev. As a result, computers were seized again.

On the same day, a similar search was carried out at the office of the Nizhny Novgorod Human Rights Union. The equipment was not confiscated, since the organization's employees presented license certificates for all software.

"We can't but connect the recent events with the speech of the governor of the region Shantsev after the meeting of the regional antiterrorist committee held on August 28," Oksana Chelysheva, director of the Foundation for Tolerance, said. According to her, searches in all three organizations were carried out by the same group.

Sources

• Check for extremism // Kasparov.ru. 2007. August 28.
• Human Rights Watch condemns persecution of journalists and human rights activists in Nizhny Novgorod // PrimaNews. 2007. September 3rd.
• Raid on computers // Kasparov.ru. 2007. August 30.
• Gone in denial // There. August 31.