MASHR Rights Group Says Cases Against Ingush Activists ‘Baseless and Politically Motivated’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 26 – Having been unable to prove their original charges and forced to dream up charges of an extremist conspiracy against eight leaders of the Ingush protest movement, the Ingush and Russian authorities have shown conclusively that all the charges they have brought are “baseless and politically motivated,” according to the MASHR Human Rights Group.

            That Ingush organization has released a statement saying that those actions like the ones directed at the liquidation of the Spiritual Center for Muslims of the Republic of Ingushetia, the Council of Teips of the Ingush People, the Ingush Committee of National Unity and other NGOs are “nothing but an anti-constitutional struggle with the Ingush people” (kavkaz-uzel.eu/blogs/342/posts/41490).

            “We demand an end to the illegal persecution of the participants of popular protest in Ingushetia,” MASHR says.

            Volunteers for the prisoner assistance group, First Aid, are speaking out about the efforts of the authorities to get them to describe their activities and to give them up. The volunteers say that they have consistently maintained that they are doing nothing wrong and that they are glad they can do what they are doing to help those behind bars (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/345128/).

            The group has released a video about its activities which include collecting money and goods from throughout the republic and then three times a month taking packages of goods of “first” necessity to the prisoners and also doing what it can to help the families of those behind bars who have often been left without a breadwinner (kavkaz-uzel.eu/videos/5512).