A Moscow court has unexpectedly acquitted the head of the Memorial human rights group, Oleg Orlov, of charges that he slandered Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.  The activist had been taken to court by Kadyrov over comments relating to the murder of rights worker Natalya Estemirova in 2009.  He says: ‘It’s a joyous occasion. I took this case as being politically right from the start […] I always said that in the eyes of the law we were right’.  Investigators have rebuffed claims from Judge Viktor Danilkin’s former assistant Natalya Vasilyeva that the Khodorkovsky judge was pressured into handing down a harsher sentence to the Yukos founder, citing insufficient evidence.  Lawyers of the incarcerated tycoon and his business partner Platon Lebedev have filed a supervisory appeal against a court decision to close an outdated case on the theft of shares from the Eastern Oil Company.  A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov, who was ousted from his post as speaker of the upper house of parliament last month, has been elected leader of the party faction in the lower house, and has vowed to continue perplexing United Russia with difficult questions.