Computers confiscated from human rights activist during search

On Monday, October 12, the room, rented by Anastasia Denisova, a member of Coordination Board of the Youth Human Rights Movement, head of the organization "ETnIKA", active member of the "GROZA" (Thunderstorm) Movement and employee of the HRC "Memorial", was searched.

Recently, the pressure on Anastasia Denisova, became regular. The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on October 4, 2009, an officer of the aviation safety service of the International Airport of Krasnodar refused to let her onboard with her laptop (despite the consent of the airline official). As a result, Denisova had to refuse from her flight to the international conference in Poland.

Just a couple of days after the incident at the airport customs, the office rented by Anastasia was visited by OBEP (Division to Fight Economic Crime) employees. At the search, they confiscated three computer system blocks. Then militiamen tried to take the activist away "for establishment personality" in a car without license plates. This was reported by the website "International Network - Youth Human Rights Movement".

The law enforcers referred to use by the "ETnIKA" of counterfeit software as the official reason of the search.

Denisova refused to go with the militiamen without presentation of charges; then, they demanded from her a copy of her passport, and left to the leaseholder of the premise.

It is interesting to note hat the OBEP agents presented a search warrant with a different address. The office of the "ETnIKA" rents its office in Frunze Street, while in the warrant the Lenina Street was indicated, reports the website of the Institute "Collective Action".

According to Alexei Kozlov, leader of the Civil United Green Alternatives (Russian abbreviation "GROZA"), "the pretext with counterfeit software was repeatedly used for repressions against human rights ecological organizations in Russia. In most instances such cases collapse, but made it possible for special agencies to paralyse the work of NGOs."

In the opinion of Dmitri Makarov, a member of the Coordination Board of the Youth Human Rights Movement, in this case we had an illegal search with excess of powers by employees of law enforcement bodies.