TODAY: Amnesty highlights Russia’s rights failures; Pussy Riot member on hunger strike; witness called by Navalny prosecutors backs his innocence; Rosbank CEO dismissed, assets seized; Council of Europe to expand in Russia; Putin centralising control.

Amnesty International’s country-by-country annual human rights report for this year remarks that Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency has curbed freedom of assembly and created ‘broadly weakened dissent’, adding Pussy Riot members and Bolotnaya Square protesters to its list of prisoners of conscience.  The criminal case against the twelve opposition activists accused of participating in ‘mass riots’ at the Bolotnaya rally last May has been sent to court.  Jailed Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has gone on hunger strike in protest against a court decision to bar her from her own parole hearing, and banner her lawyers from further representing her. ‘Let the troika sitting here – the judge, the prosecutor and the colony employee – decide my fate.’  Paul McCartney is the latest celebrity to throw his weight behind Alyokhina’s case, in a handwritten letter to the Kremlin urging hers and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s release.  Kirov region governor Nikita Belykh was summoned by state prosecutors as a witness in the trial against anti-corruption blogger and opposition figure Alexei Navalny; according to his testimony (video), Navalny is not guilty and that the charges against him are ‘dubious’.  But Navalny maintains certainty that he will be convicted for political reasons nonetheless; and this extensive report on politicised court cases and the justice system notes that, according to current statistics, less than 1% of all verdicts issued in Russian courts are ‘not guilty’.