RUSSIA: Attack on human rights activist revenge for his work says daughter

Record ID: 353513

  • Title: RUSSIA: Attack on human rights activist revenge for his work says daughter
  • Date: 4th April 2009
  • Summary: MOSCOW, RUSSIA (APRIL 2, 2009) (REUTERS) TV MONITORS SHOWING COURT TRIAL AGAINST FORMER YUKOS CEO MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY IN PROCESS MONITOR SHOWING YELENA LIPSTER, LAWYER AND DAUGHTER OF PONOMARYOV, DEFENDING KHODORKOVSKY DURING TRIAL
  • Embargoed: 19th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAES8R4Q88RGQVA1YX4HZVZ7UXL
  • Story Text: A Russian human rights activist and prominent government critic since the communist era has been badly beaten in Moscow in an attack relatives say was revenge for his work.
    Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the For Human Rights group, was attacked outside his Moscow home on Tuesday night (March 31) by a number of men and was briefly hospitalised before returning home, said his daughter Yelena Liptser, who is a lawyer for Khodorkovsky's former business partner Platon Lebedev.

    "When he got out of the car he saw a man coming up to him and asked him for a cigarette, my father doesn't smoke and told him he can not help him. After this he was hit on his head from behind. He fell on the ground and several people started to kick him on his head and in his chest, he covered his head with his arms and screamed loudly," she told Reuters.
    The beating was denounced by rights groups, with Amnesty International calling on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to speak out against what it called the "increasing climate of intolerance towards human rights defenders".
    On January 19, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot dead in a central Moscow street along with a young reporter. The killers of several prominent journalists, including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, have not been brought to trial.
    In a separate incident, a reporter for a local opposition newspaper in the Moscow region died of his injuries after what local activists said was a weekend beating, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday.
    Lipster said she was sure the attack on her father was revenge for his work.

    "He defends Chechens, he is the head of the foundation that protects the rights of prisoners, on March 27th he chaired public hearings of the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. So he was involved in many different cases and I am convinced this attack is connected to his professional activities," she said.
    Ponomaryov has criticised Russia's failure to educate young people about the Soviet Union's gulag camps and deplored the strong showing of Joseph Stalin in a recent television competition to find Russia's most popular historical figure.
    An official with the Council of Europe, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger had met Ponomaryov shortly before the attack to discuss human rights in Russia and has called on the Russian authorities to hold the attackers accountable.
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