Samara police detained members of the Left Front and the CPRF before Victory Day, a Kasparov.Ru correspondent reported on May 10.
In the morning of May 8, Grigory Oganezov, an aide to Mikhail Abdalkin, a deputy in the Samara provincial legislature and a correspondent for the newspaper “Rabochaya Demokratiya” and an activist of the Left Front, was detained. The reason was allegedly disorderly conduct (Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code). Two police cars arrived for the arrest. The police took Ohanezov to the Kirovsky District Police Department in Samara, where he will stay until the trial. In his words Ohanezov did not commit any petty hooliganism, he was arrested for political activism and preventively “closed” out of fear that he, as an assistant to deputy Abdalkin who listened to Vladimir Putin’s noodle appeals, would organize another scandalous action against the authorities on Victory Day.
Oganezov considers what happened to him to be a fact of political pressure: “Abdalkin was fined for discrediting him, and now they are trying to repress his assistant”, he said.
On May 9 at 11:25 a.m. in Samara police detained Alexei Palagin, assistant of Samara Duma deputy from CPRF Igor Fomenko. Palagin was served a summons to appear as a witness in the Oganezov case and then put in a police car and beaten. Palagin was taken to the police station №5 in Leninsky district, where he was given a preventive conversation. At 13:30 Palagin was released from the police. It is possible that his detention is a rearrangement for the police fearing CPRF actions during the May 9 military parade in Samara. According to unofficial information, the arrest of the oppositionists was sanctioned by Dmitry Kochergin, vice-governor and head of the Foreign Policy Department.
Both activists have lawyers working with them. Complaints about the police actions will be forwarded to the CPRF headquarters, according to a source in the CPRF regional branch.
