Fledgling Democracies

A case highlighting the crackdown by Russian authorities on NGOs with Western ties was decided today in favor of Manana Aslamaziyan, former head of an organization that helped train journalists and which was funded largely by U.S. sources.

Aslamaziyan had been charged with smuggling after failing to declare cash worth about $12,400 as she passed through Sheremetyevo airport in January of 2007. In the months following her arrest, her NGO was raided by police, its bank accounts were frozen and a new charge of tax evasion was brought against Aslamaziyan, who fled to Paris.

But today’s decision found the smuggling charge to be unconstitutional, on the grounds that the government’s definition of “large sums of money” was simply too vague. Reason to be cautiously optimistic? Aslamaziyan’s lawyer thinks so. Viktor Parshutkin, Aslamazyan’s lawyer, called Tuesday’s decision a “good omen” for the Russian legal system. He’s quoted in The Moscow Times story:

“This decision has made me very happy,” he said by telephone from St. Petersburg. “[The Constitutional Court] has demonstrated its independence from the political machinations of the authorities.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under NGO, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.