Russia’s FSB finds nothing criminal in an Internet list of “enemies of the nation”

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has found no crime in the publication on the Internet of a list of “enemies of the nation” with a call to deal with those on it. The request from human rights groups to launch a criminal investigation under articles on punishment for terrorism and public calls to extremist activity have been turned down. This was stated on Wednesday by the leader of the human rights Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina. Her name is on the list of “enemies”.

According to Gannushkina, the FSB have given their grounds as being that the people listed are “unimportant”. “What conclusion should we reach from that? That it’s possible to kill unimportant people?”, she asked indignantly.

“The reason for the refusal to launch a criminal investigation is clear – the FSB doesn’t want to work”, she added.

In an interview given to “Ekho Moskvy”, Gannushkina compared the refusal to launch a criminal investigation against the authors of the site on which the list was published with the warning which the human rights organization “Memorial” received from the prosecutor’s office for posting on their site an analysis of Muslim texts. “There the texts were not even quoted, and the statement was only made that  they did not contain incitement to violence”.

At the same time on the site where the list of “enemies of the nation” is posted, there is advice “how to poison beggars asking for money”. “In that the state sees no danger, but the work of human rights defenders it considers dangerous”, Gannushkina concluded.

The Civic Assistance Committee had previously approached the Prosecutor General demanding that he take measures over the publication of open calls to murder specific people giving addresses and photographs posted on one of the fascist sites. The Prosecutor General instructed the FSB to look into whether the facts which the Committee presented contained elements of crimes set down in Articles 205 (“Terrorism”) and 280 (“Public calls to carry out extremist activity”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

On one of the Nazi sites on the Internet a list of “enemies of the nation” was published containing journalists, Russian public features and human rights activists, with an open call to deal with these people. The material gives addresses, telephone numbers and passport details of those called “enemies”.

PL commentary

Readers may find the following cases involving entirely different responses from the FSB of interest

The warning issued to “Memorial”  http://khpg.org/en/1141171473

The case of Taras Zelenyak  http://khpg.org/1161983411, http://khpg.org/en/1159913863