Press release, 01.11.2013

On October 31, Andrei Rudomakha, leader of the Krasnodar branch of YABLOKO and Coordinator of the North Caucasus Environmental Watch, was arrested by police when he arrived to Sochi from Krasnodar on the pretext that he had not come to an interrogation.

In the evening of the same day Andrei Rudomakha was released from the police department but summoned for an interrogation by November 6.

According Rudomakha, he was forced to sign the obligation to appear before the investigator. “It is clear that the criminal proceedings were instituted so that to press on me. Obviously, the case has no prospects,” he said.

While Coordinator of the North Caucasus Environmental Watch was in the police station, a television team of the Sochi Internal Affairs press service arrived there and filmed the whole process of the “investigative operations” on Andrei Rudomakha: they video recordered how Rudomakha was placed into the police station jail for criminals, how he was escorted to the head of the police station and how he signed an obligation to appear.

“It was like a pre-staged and well thought over show,” Andrei Rudomakha noted. He also said that he intended appeal the actions of the Sochi police.

YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin expressed his certainly that this was a purely political case, “Rudomakha is persecuted for his fight against the tyranny of Governor Tkachyov”.

A year ago a criminal libel case was opened against Andrei Rudomakha for his criticising judge E. Zolotukhina

See also:

FSB taps into telephone conversations of Andrei Rudomakha, Chair of the Krasnodar branch of YABLOKO, and tries to detain him