11.06.2012, 19:06:15

Police officers at the entrance to the building where Alexei Navalny lives. Photo RIA Novosti / Valery Melnikov

Disturbances in apartments

The Investigative Committee came home to opposition politicians

The Investigative Committee conducted or attempted to conduct searches in the apartments of opposition leaders, their parents and a number of civil activists. Alexey Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Udaltsov and others were issued summonses demanding to appear at the Investigative Committee for questioning - as part of the investigation into the criminal case of mass riots on May 6 at the March of Millions. All summonses were issued for 11 am on June 12, and this most likely means that none of those summoned to the new mass action dedicated to Russia Day will be in time. The searches caused a huge resonance: they were talked about on federal television channels, and the hashtag #hello37year entered global Twitter trends. At the same time, formally nothing new is happening: law enforcement officers “pressed” the opposition with searches and subpoenas five years ago. Only the scale of the protest was different then.

wrote this morning, more appropriate in the account of some National Bolshevik “8 a.m., people broke in, didn’t let me get dressed, robbed my apartment, humiliated me,” TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak . “The most unpleasant thing is that, out of absolute lawlessness, they can break into your place and simply rob you and laugh at your personal letters,” she was indignant. “Cool. My house is being searched. In connection with the case of mass unrest. The door was almost sawed open. (Actually, yes),” this is a message from Alexei Navalny’s Twitter . Later, Navalny posted a photograph: an investigator, in the presence of witnesses, is conducting a search in the children’s room of his apartment in Maryino. Civil activists and journalists headed to his house. As of 6 p.m., the search in his apartment was ongoing. The office of the RosPil project is cordoned off, people wearing masks are sitting at the entrance. There are no RosPil employees there - today is a day off. But they do not exclude unauthorized entry into the premises.

Investigator and witnesses during a search in Navalny's apartment. Photo from Twitter @navalny

“They broke into my apartment early in the morning,” Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov told reporters . “They made a terrible mess, tapped the floor, a dog sniffed the house. They confiscated Left Front documents, including very old ones, computers, phones, photographs. children and friends. They collected six bags, and even asked me to help them carry them to the car." Communication equipment was also confiscated from Udaltsov’s wife, Anastasia.

“I’m in the Moscow region at a conference, and then my nanny calls me from my apartment,” Maria Baronova, an activist of the Resistance movement, tells a Lenta.ru correspondent. “And she says in horror that at first a group of investigators demanded to open the door, and when the frightened woman refused, they climbed out the window, and at the entrance they turned on a grinder saw and threatened to cut down the door.” Phones, office equipment, bank cards, and an inhaler were confiscated from Baronova, which in the inventory left after the search is described as a “bulbulator” - a device for smoking hashish.

Investigators came to Parnas co-chairman Boris Nemtsov , but he was not at home, and they did not break down the door. , a member of the federal bureau of Solidarity They came to Ilya Yashin , he was also not at home, and what happened there in the end is unknown, the opposition politician’s phone was turned off. The most unpleasant story happened with Solidarity activist Mikhail Maglov. As his colleague and roommate Alexander Baturin told Lenta.ru, Mikhail was not at home at night - he took part in the search for the child as part of the Lisa Alert project. Maglov returned early in the morning, and he and Baturin headed to Ksenia Sobchak’s apartment, which investigators had already searched. There, Baturin says, law enforcement officials checked Maglov’s documents, said: “Oh, you’re on the list for Bolotnaya,” they put him in a car and drove him away in an unknown direction. None of his comrades still knows where the oppositionist was and what happened to him. Maglov's phone was switched off and on, but at the same time someone hung up the call. Finally, in the evening, around 9 p.m., it became known that Muggles was free, but there were no details yet.

Searches have taken place or continue in the apartments of the parents of Navalny’s wife, Yulia, as well as the parents of Ilya Yashin. Sergei Udaltsov said that investigators also came to his parents.

All oppositionists whose homes were searched were issued summonses requiring them to appear for questioning at the Investigative Committee building in Tekhnicheskiy Lane. Interrogations not just on a weekend, but on a holiday, and even an hour before the start of the mass rally scheduled for June 12, can only mean that the authorities do not want to see opposition leaders at the rally.

The Investigative Committee on its website only confirmed the fact that “more than ten searches” had been carried out. In addition, the department’s website posted a message that the number of suspects in the case of the riots on Bolotnaya Square has increased from seven to twelve people. One of these people was a member of the now banned "Movement against Illegal Immigration." Today, the court arrested the seventh suspect in the case, Yaroslav Belousov, until July 6.

Despite the extraordinary circumstances, the last meeting of the organizing committee of the protest action before June 12 still took place. What was happening, of course, was assessed as “lawlessness and repression,” but in general the organizing committee discussed purely technical details of the procession along the boulevards and the rally on Sakharov Avenue. The members of the organizing committee somehow even habitually argued with each other. There were phrases like “let’s not deviate from the regulations”, “why should Parfenov be allowed to speak - he didn’t get caught in the mix on May 6” and so on. They decided to approve the list of speakers behind closed doors. The gathering is scheduled for June 12 at 12:00 in the area of Pushkinskaya Square.

The reaction of the organizing committee is not surprising: from the point of view of seasoned oppositionists, nothing new is happening. have always put pressure on the opposition through subpoenas, searches, detentions and arrests The authorities under Vladimir Putin . In 2007, the authorities suppressed the “Dissent Marches” using exactly the same methods. It sometimes looked a little wild, for example, when two riot police officers led the future governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh, arm in arm into a paddy wagon . But it had the desired effect: the marches were reduced to zero, with only a few dozen people attending the very last ones. Each of whom knew very well: if you are an oppositionist and are going to hold a rally, turn off your phone a couple of days before the rally and don’t show up at home. The National Bolsheviks could tell you even more about this. They were searched, interrogated, arrested and imprisoned back in the days when the idea that it was possible to post a political cartoon or demotivational message on a social network was just beginning to occur to today’s rally participants.

“There is no need to intimidate me, unless it would be advisable to send a squad of zombies to me to intimidate me. Here I can turn pale,” wrote in his “explanatory sermon Eduard Limonov ,” commenting on today’s events.

However, the scale of the protest has changed. As a result, the reaction to it also changed. The story about searches in the apartments of oppositionists was broadcast on federal channels. It seems they even showed Alexei Navalny, who was blacklisted on air. In 2007, when Garry Kasparov was arrested and Nemtsov and Belykh were detained, this was impossible. And Twitter users, having woken up and learned with horror about the searches, brought the hashtag #hello37year into world trends for several hours. Although the comparison with 1937 seems exaggerated. “The 37th is when the liberal wing of United Russia and Nurgaliev are shot . And now - 1904 maximum,” user @alshishov wrote on Twitter.

And we must understand: after stones were thrown at the police on May 6 (regardless of who did it), the attitude towards the mass protests that began in December changed. And the searches are just the beginning. The authorities have not yet tested the new law on rallies against “angry citizens.”

Andrey Kozenko

Disturbances in apartments

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