Press release, 13.11.2013

YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin acknowledged that the value judgment attributed to Chair of the Krasnodar branch of YABLOKO Andrei Rudomakha and serving as a basis for filing a criminal libel case against Rudomakha (under Article 298.1 of the Criminal Code “Defamation of a Judge”) was made by him. Last week Rudomakha was made by investigators to give a written undertaking not to leave the city.

In October 2012, a press release was published on YABLOKO’s web-site on unlawful arrest of YABLOKO’s Alexei Mandrigelya. The press release ran as follows, “Judge Yelena Zolotukhina is widely known as a travesty of justice as she has been willingly implementing the orders of the authorities on unlawful decisions. The sentence on Alexei Mandrigelya confirms this,” he said”.

The investigators decided that the words “he said” referred to Andrei Rudomakha who was mentioned in the text, rather than Sergei Mitrokhin.

However, according to Mitrokhin, this technical error at YABLOKO’s web-site has been corrected already.

“I know the situation in the Krasnodar region quite well, and I have been following the political trials in the region, that is why I decided to make my value judgment about the work of Judge Yelena Zolotukhina. It is absurd that my statement was laid in the basis of a criminal [libel] case [against Andrei Rudomakha],” Mitrokhin noted.

“Andrei Rudomakha has been persecuted for his environmental activism,” Sergei Mitrokhin said. “The authorities fear that YABLOKO’s activities on the eve of the Olympics will undermine Russia’s international prestige, even though we do not pursue such a goal. But we can not put up with the terrible environmental damage caused by preparation for the Olympics in the region,” Mitrokhin stressed.

Earlier YABLOKO’s Green Russia Faction has stated that the Sochi Olympics were turning into an environmental catastrophe.

Sergei Mitrokhin will appeal against the decision on filing a criminal case on Andrei Rudomakha in view of lack of evidence of a crime, as well as on formal grounds, as the case on such a publication on the party web-site is under the jurisdiction of Moscow, not Krasnodar.

See also:
EWNC coordinator suspect in a crime, barred from traveling
FSB detains EWNC activist in airport for “offending Olympics”
Chair of YABLOKO Krasnodar branch Andrei Rudomakha to be interrogated by police
FSB taps into telephone conversations of Andrei Rudomakha, Chair of the Krasnodar branch of YABLOKO, and tries to detain him