Press Release, Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, November 9, 2013

Police and FSB operatives detained our deputy coordinator Dmitry Shevchenko today for a total of four-and-a-half hours, in a continuing campaign of intimidation against our environmental activists which has increased drastically as the Winter Olympics in Sochi get closer.

FSB agents

Dmitry flew in to the Krasnodar airport at 2:45 a.m. on a flight from Saint Petersburg, after a trip to Sweden with Krasnodar farmers as part of an exchange on environmental agricultural practices. As he exited the airport to get to his taxi, two FSB operatives stopped him, calling him by name and told him to go back inside. There they passed him on to the policemen on duty.

Police and FSB repeatedly demanded to see Dmitry’s passport and searched his belongings. The search found nothing suspicious. Officers also demanded that he hand over his passport which he refused because by law only showing the document is sufficient, and police is known to simply walk off with people’s documents and hold on to them for hours.

Police officers accused Dmitry of resisting demands of the police, then led him to the security check area of the airport and looked through his belongings again. One policeman said that Dmitry has been detained as part of a pre-Olympics “counterterrorism operation”. Having missed his taxi, Dmitry emotionally said “Your FSB Olympics can go to hell,” after which the officers gleefully announced that Dmitry will now be held on criminal charges for offending officers of the law.