Office of Russian Anti-Torture NGO Attacked in Chechen Capital
Masked men stormed the Grozny office of the Committee Against Torture, a prominent human rights NGO, on Wednesday morning, the organization said via its Twitter account.
The Committee Against Torture wrote on its official Twitter page Wednesday that masked men had vandalized its vehicle and broke down the door to its office. Other members of a mob that had gathered near the office climbed onto its balcony and tried to break a window, the NGO said.
Chechen authorities had announced earlier that an event protesting the “information war” being waged against Russia and Chechnya would take place on Wednesday. No police units were dispatched to the scene, according to the Committee Against Torture.
In January, the Committee Against Torture was added to the Justice Ministry's registry of “foreign agents,” a list of NGOs that engage in broadly defined political activity and receive foreign funding. In the Soviet era, the label “foreign agent” was widely considered to be synonymous with spy.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/office-of-russian-anti-torture-ngo-attacked-in-chechen-capital/522955.html
