MOSCOW, May 22 (RIA Novosti) - A criminal case against 12 activists allegedly involved in last May’s riots on Bolotnaya Square in the Russian capital, after hundreds of people briefly broke through police lines in a bid to take their protest to the Kremlin walls, has been sent to court.
“Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin has approved a list of charges in the so-called Bolotnaya case,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday.
The case has been sent to Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court.
The investigation against other alleged participants in the riots is ongoing.
Over 650 people were detained at a May 6, 2012 rally on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a controversial third presidential term as police clashed with protesters.
Most were soon released, but a case soon followed into what the investigators called mass riots. The riot allegations are hotly disputed by the opposition, which blames the police for provoking the clashes and claims the case is political.
Putin won a landslide victory at March 4 elections marred by allegations of vote fraud. He was forced to stand down by the Constitution in 2008 and shifted to the post of prime minister, but remained by far Russia’s most powerful politician. His opponents accuse him of corruption and a crackdown on political freedoms.
