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