Post date: Jun 11, 2012 9:10:11 PM
MOSCOW, RUSSIA (JUNE 11, 2012) (REUTERS) - Russian prominent anti-corruption blogger and opposition politician Alexei Navalny called the search police carried out at his apartment on Monday (June 11) a total lawlessness and absurdity, after investigators left his apartment carrying several cartons with his seized belongings.
Anti-corruption blogger and opposition politician Alexei Navalny says everything looks like absurdity after police raid his apartment at Moscow outskirts.
Earlier on Monday the apartments of several prominent opposition politicians were raided in a clear warning Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing patience with dissenters a day before a rally that could draw tens of thousands of people challenging his rule.
"A 13 hours long search is over, some crime of the century must have happened, because we know that there are totally 160 investigators in the investigation group, it's something really weird, a bigger crime than the one being investigated now must have not yet happened in Moscow," Navalny told journalists and supporters who gathered outside his apartment block.
Navalny said the raid was an obvious attempt to prevent him from joining the protest march slated for Tuesday (June 12) and apparently from any real activity.
"They seized all phones, starting from the modern ones and up to some very old one which they have found, all computers, all laptops, all (such thing), just one home phone is left, so in this regard I'm somewhere in the 20th century now," Navalny said adding that in his opinion the absurdity of all what was happening was obvious also for the investigators.
"I am in a great mood now, what I am very happy about is that the whole investigation team, all of them, said they would join my party after I create it," Navalny said followed by cheerful shouts and applaud of his supporters.
The searches, which police launched at the apartments of several opposition leaders early in the morning, were a new sign Putin is shifting to more aggressive tactics to quash protests as he starts a six-year term.
Putin signed a law on Friday (June 8) that increased fines for violations of public order at street demonstrations, ignoring warnings from his human rights council that it was unconstitutional. Putin's opponents said the law was an attempt to silence dissent.
Russia's main investigation agency said it planned to conduct about 10 searches in connection with a criminal probe into violence against police at a protest held in Moscow on the eve of Putin's inauguration on May 7.
Navalny's lawyer was barred from the flat for hours, Ekho Moskvy radio said.
A special police unit, armed with machine guns and wearing balaclavas, also surrounded Navalny's anti-corruption fund 'RosPil' office building in central Moscow on Tuesda, and blocked the courtyard entrance gate, restricting those permitted to enter the compound.
TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov were among those targeted as well, activists said.
Other members of the opposition said the raids were a sign that Putin had given up on democracy.
Opposition leaders have permission for a march and rally in central Moscow on Tuesday (June 12), a test of their ability to maintain pressure on Putin through protests despite a new law increasing fines for protests to as much as 300,000 roubles ($9,200) for participants and 1 million roubles ($30,600) for organisers.