On 3 April 2015 the Sovetsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod chaired by judge Olga Tonenkova will examine the statement of INGO «The Committee Against Torture» on declaring illegal the citation of the Nizhny Novgorod region Prosecutor Oleg Ponasenko on rectifying the violations of the federal legislation. It is referred to the citation based on which the Committee Against Torture was included in the list of non-commercial organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent.
As we have previously reported, in accordance with the law on non-commercial organizations (part 6 article 2 of the Federal law dated 12 January 1996 N 7-FZ), the activity aimed at changing the state policy is considered to be political activity of the non-governmental organization.
The Prosecutor’s citation mentioned, among other things, as an example of political activity aimed at changing the state policy, the fact of our organization informing the public audience and the state authorities representatives about the illegal violence in the police and of these incidents’ inefficient investigation of by the Investigative Committee bodies.
However, since neither torture nor inefficient investigation of such facts is the state policy in our country we cannot agree with the Nizhny Novgorod region Prosecutor that our actions were aimed at its changing. Our more detailed arguments on the Prosecutor’s citation can be followed here.
The Committee Against Torture will be represented in court by Igor Kalyapin, the Chairman of the organization, his assistant on legal and analytical work Dmitry Kazakov, and lawyer of «Agora» (recognized as an undesirable organization) association Ramil Akhmetgaliyev.
«We think that this Prosecutor’s citation is unlawful and was issued based on wrong interpretation of the rules of substantive law and without taking proper account of the ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. With regards to this we will ask the District Court to declare unlawful both the fact of the Prosecutor’s citation as well as his attributing certain types of our organization’s activity to political activity», – Igor Kalyapin emphasized.