Employees of the Russian Investigative Committee and operatives of the Center for Combating Extremism came with a search to the employees of Memorial, the Memorial Society telegram channel reports.
Searches were carried out, in particular, at the residence of Oleg Orlov, chairman of the council of the human rights center, Nikita Petrov, deputy chairman of the center, Alexandra Polivanova and her mother, member of the board of the center, Yan Rachinsky, chairman of the board of the Memorial society, and Alexander Guryanov, deputy chairman of the council of the society.
On March 6, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case against employees of the Memorial society. As TASS wrote, the basis “was the suspicion that Memorial included in the lists of repressed those people who collaborated with the fascist occupiers during the Great Patriotic War.” Earlier, Putin himself accused human rights defenders of the same thing, a few weeks before Memorial was officially liquidated in Russia by a decision of the Supreme Court.
The human rights activist told why the employees of “Memorial” could be prosecuted: