December 9, 2009 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – Dec 9, 2009

091209.jpg

TODAY: Perm death toll rises, ministers seek to blame officials; Putin on Magnitsky: ‘the lawyer’; Jehovah’s Witnesses halted; pensioners demonstrate over axing of cheap travel; rail bombing unearths broad issues; art and identity, Kosovo.
The President and Prime Minister continue to weigh in over the Perm nightclub fire, whose death count continues to rise (now at 119) amid reports that the club was heavily overcrowded at the time of the fire.  Dmitry Medvedev has ordered Prosecutor General Yury Chaika ‘to find and prosecute officials on all levels of the government for the blaze‘.  But the blame game doesn’t end there: ‘a Perm resident who shares the same first and last names as one of the suspects expressed fear for her life‘.  From Yulia Latynina: ‘Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an Nov. 27 interview in France that he does not know what “the lawyer” (refusing to refer to Magnitsky by name) was imprisoned for.  Putin did add, however, that since Magnitsky had been arrested, there had to have been a good reason for it.‘  
Back