KASPAROV'S UNITED CIVIC FRONT OFFICES SEARCHED BY

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 012916 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR/RUS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/13/2016 TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM PINR RS SUBJECT: KASPAROV'S UNITED CIVIC FRONT OFFICES SEARCHED BY AUTHORITIES Classified By: DCM Daniel A. Russell: 1.4 (b). ¶1. (C) On December 13, United Civic Front Chairman Garry Kasparov confirmed press accounts that police had searched his organization's offices the afternoon of December 12. Kasparov told us he thought that "intimidation" was the purpose of the search, which the police for their part described to the media as prompted by a desire to prevent "provcations" during a "march of those who don't agree," organized by "Other Russia" and planned for December 16 in Moscow. ¶2. (C) Kasparov alleged that the Ministry of Internal Affairs representatives had violated both the law and the procedural code in their search of his organization's premises. He claimed that some of them had failed to show the proper identification and that some of the materials had been "illegally" confiscated. Kasparov's lawyer was filing a protest, he said, and it was possible that the matter would go to court. ¶3. (C) Kasparov earlier told us that the December 16 march had not been prohibited, as has been reported in the Russian press. He said that "Other Russia's" plans to march through the center of Moscow had been verbally rejected by the Moscow authorities, who had proposed instead that "Other Russia" hold a meeting on a square in central Moscow. "Other Russia," said Kasparov, was insisting that the form of the demonstration --a march-- remain unchanged. ¶4. (C) Kasparov estimated that about three thousand representatives, including members of Eduard Limonov's National Bolsheviks and Mikhail Kasyanov's Peoples Democratic Union, would participate in the march. "Other Russia" had no plans to bus participants in from other regions, he said. ¶5. (C) On the proposed march, William Smirnov, a Moscow professor who cooperates with Yelena Pamfilova's Presidential Commission on Human Rights, told us December 13 that the authorities remain concerned about any anti-government public action. Smirnov recalled the large number of police and Internal Affairs troops that had been mustered to control an earlier Russian march as an example of continued nervousness in Moscow in the wake of Ukraine's Orange Revolution. BURNS