On November 15, 2005, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained British lawyer Bill Bowring at a Moscow airport, thus preventing him from traveling to the city of Nizhny Novgorod to observe open hearings in the criminal trial of human rights defender Stanislav Dmitrievsky.
“The trials involving the Russian Chechen Friendship Society and its director, Mr. Dmitrievsky, are part of an ongoing campaign to unfairly silence critics of the Russian government’s policies toward Chechnya,” said Archi Pyati, Senior Associate at Human Rights First. “In that context, the detention of a European lawyer attempting to monitor these trials can only be interpreted as an attempt to keep the world in the dark about the deterioration in basic freedoms and the human rights abuses that are going on in the Russian Federation today.”
Agents of the FSB detained Mr. Bowring at Moscow’s international airport Sheremetyevo-2 on his arrival from the U.K. He was held for more than four hours before being informed that he would be turned away despite his possession of a valid passport and visa for entry to the Russian Federation.
Mr. Bowring was traveling to Nizhniy Novgorod to observe two hearings scheduled for November 16. The first relates to the prosecution of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, director of the Russian Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) under a counter-extremism law. The charges refer to two letters calling for an end to the conflict in Chechnya published in a human rights newsletter of which Mr. Dmitrievsky is an editor. The second hearing involves an appeal by RCFS of the decision by federal tax authorities to make unauthorized withdrawals from its operational accounts. Mr. Bowring had previously traveled to Nizhny Novgorod to investigate the official pressure against RCFS and published his findings in a detailed report.
Human Rights First condemns the detention and expulsion of Mr. Bowring by the Russian Federation.
