Russia Protests: Thousands Of Anti-Putin Demonstrators March In Moscow
Source: Huffington Post
MOSCOW (AP) — Several thousand protesters have marched through central Moscow to call for the release of 20 people who were arrested after clashes between police and demonstrators in May 2012.
Some of them face up to 10 years in prison if convicted for the protest, held on Bolotnaya Square on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration to a third term as Russia's president.
The protesters marched Sunday with a banner stretching across the street reading: "Freedom to the Bolotnaya heroes, the hostages of Putin." Others held portraits of the jailed protesters.
Of the 28 people who were rounded up in the case, eight were recently freed on amnesty. Several defendants are under house arrest, but most of the others have been in jail for more than a year in a half.
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MOSCOW, February 2 (RIA Novosti) – Thousands of people gathered for a protest march in downtown Moscow on Sunday urging the authorities to drop charges against a group of activists facing lengthy jail terms over a 2012 mass anti-Kremlin rally.
Leftist opposition leader and one of the suspects, Sergei Udaltsov estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 participated in the march, while the police reports said that some 2,000 people took to the capital’s boulevards.
Last week, a Moscow court held the final deliberations in the so-called Bolotnoye case over the rally that took place on May 6, 2012, on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to his third presidential term. The sanctioned rally ended with protesters clashing with police on the downtown Bolotnaya Square where over 500 people were detained.
Since then, more than 20 activists were accused of their roles in the “mass riots” that day. The Sunday protest called on the officials to release the jailed suspects and drop the whole case.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140202/187140457/Thousands-March-in-Moscow-to-Support-Charged-Oppositon-Activists.html
