Court won’t halt Politkovskaya retrial

August 7th, 2009

A Russian court in Moscow refused a request from the family of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya to halt a retrial of three men accused of being accomplices in her murder. Lawyers for the family of Politkovskaya, who was gunned down outside her apartment in 2006, had asked for the case to be returned to prosecutors and merged with an investigation into the mastermind behind the murder. The trial will resume in September. Read more here

Kremlin allows security services to spy on mail

July 22nd, 2009

The Kremlin have passed a decree allowing security services, including the FSB, Foreign Intelligence service, police and customs to obtain information from reading people’s mail without a warrant. Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights activist said to move showed the return of a “totalitarian regime”. Read more here