July 22, 2011 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – July 22, 2011

TODAY: NGO sees holes in Magnitsky documentation; Voina artist placed on international wanted list; four detained over migalki protest.  Medvedev tells police to ease up on trade union protests; policeman quits after urinating video; soldier on soldier violence increasing. US and Russia progress on missile defense; on Mrs Merkel’s unsavory relationship with Russia; extremism official narrowly escapes murder attempt in Dagestan; more on the alcohol crackdown.

U.S.-based organization Physicians for Human Rights has said it is worried by the ‘significant discrepancies’ found in the official documentation relating to the death in jail of Heritage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, used in an investigation into the murky circumstances of his passing.  Russian human rights activists have voiced their support for the Investigative Committee’s decision to consider all avenues in the 2009 killing of rights advocate Natalya Estemirova.  Artist Oleg Vorotnikov of the Voina collective, charged with overturning a police car, has been put on the international wanted list after skipping bail, Ria-Novosti reports. Three Russian activists and a journalist have been arrested in Moscow in a protest against the use of migalki, despite the participants being dispersed sufficiently so as to ensure the protest could not be deemed a mass gathering.  President Medvedev has argued that law enforcement should not interfere in the rights of labor movements to hold peaceful rallies.  Platon Lebedev, the business partner of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky has filed an appeal against his sentence for embezzlement.