The Committee against torture received the warning of the prosecutor's office

The Nizhny Novgorod Regional Public Organization Committee against torture received an official warning against the prosecutor's office about the inadmissibility of violations related to the lack of registration of the organization as a foreign agent. This was reported by Interfax-Volga region with reference to the chairman of the organization, a member of the HRC Igor Kalyapin.

"In 2011-2013, the committee against torture was funded from foreign sources, including the voluntary fund for supporting the victims of the UN torture (Switzerland), the Institute of the Open Society (Budapest) and others," the document says. “In addition, during the audit it was found that until November 2012 the organization took part in public events that could be regarded as political activity,” the prosecutor’s office notes. It does not specify which public events are meant.

According to the prosecutor's office, this indicates that the committee against torture is an NPO that performs the functions of a "foreign agent". In a warning from the organization, they require to register with the authorized body.

“The warning is not clear. The prosecutor’s office warns us against some actions, but from which it does not speak,” the representative of the committee said. He said that the committee against torture would "officially request the prosecutor's office, which is related to this warning."

Similar warnings received a number of NGOs. The human rights organization "Agora" appeals in court the warning of the prosecutor's office of Tatarstan received on Tuesday. This was announced by the official representative of Agora Dmitry Kolbasin. “We consider this warning illegal and unreasonable and in the near future we will appeal it in court,” he said. “We are engaged in free legal aid, for which the Ministry of Justice previously included us in the list of socially oriented NGOs. Also last year, the first deputy head of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, Alexander Smirnov, confirmed that Agora is not a political organization.”

The political activity, which is supposedly engaged in Agora, according to the prosecutor's office, is expressed in the provision of legal assistance to activists of opposition movements. Kolbasin confirmed that the association has foreign financing. At the same time, he assured that Agora does not fulfill any instructions of foreign states. “This is an absolutely incorrect understanding of the activities of NGOs,” he said.

In July 2012, the FSB Office for the Nizhny Novgorod Region initiated a preliminary investigation against Kalyapin. This is not the first attempt to institute criminal proceedings against a human rights activist for "disclosing the secrets of the investigation." Twice human rights activists tried to bring to criminal liability on suspicion of disclosing the secrets of the investigation, representatives of the Chechen law enforcement agencies, who, according to the assumption of the committee against torture, were responsible for committing and concealing serious crimes.

Kalyapin said that he did not disclose the materials of the affairs, but attracted the attention of the media and society to the facts of refusal of representatives of state bodies to investigate the crimes of the security forces in Chechnya. In his opinion, the pressure on him aims to terminate the activities of his organization in cases of crimes related to Ramzan Kadyrov and his environment.

The committee against torture noted that this is another episode of pressure on the organization and its employees. In January in Nizhny Novgorod, the police detained the lawyer of the Committee against torture Anton Ryzhov, who returned from a business trip to Chechnya. The human rights activist seized a laptop and memory cards. According to the police, they received a signal that these media have information about terrorist activities. The human rights activist was released at about 4 a.m.