After the Theater.doc performance about Oyub Titiev, the police cordoned off the Memorial building

In Moscow, after the Theater.doc performance about human rights activist Oyub Titiev, the police cordoned off the building of the International Memorial Society. An employee of the organization, historian Alexey Makarov, reported this to OVD-Info.

Police said they received a report that there was a bomb in the building. They cordoned off and evacuated not only the entrance to the Memorial, but also the entrance located on the Garden Ring side. Residents of the building in which the organization is located were not evacuated.

Then a dog handler arrived with the dog and inspected the building. They took explanatory notes from the organization’s employees, after which the police lifted the cordon and left.

The historian also added that before this, the police came to the Theater.doc premises with a similar message about a bomb.

• In May, the authorities of St. Petersburg demanded that the space of the show “Faceless” cancel the Teatr.doc reading “Torture 2018”. The owners of the site received an order from the prosecutor's office demanding that they cancel the show. The director of the space was summoned to the FSB, and he was threatened with the closure of the site.
• The head of the branch of the Memorial Human Rights Center in Grozny, Oyub Titiev, was arrested in January 2018. He was accused of drug possession (Article 228 of the Criminal Code). The human rights activist himself stated that the drugs were planted on him. He insists that employees of the Kurchaloevsky district police department falsified evidence that he illegally acquired and stored narcotic substances.