MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) – A lawmaker in Russia’s lower house of parliament helped “organize mass rioting” at an opposition rally attended by thousands of people in Moscow last year, a senior police officer testified Wednesday.
Lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who represents the minority Just Russia party, “organized mass rioting together with Sergei Udaltsov,” a leftist leader already accused of inciting riots at the rally, according to the testimony.
As a lawmaker, Ponomaryov has immunity from prosecution. He has not been officially accused and has denied any wrongdoing at the May 6, 2012, rally, which ended in clashes with the police.
Officer Dmitry Deinichenko, who was in charge of the police command center at the site of the rally, gave the testimony at a trial in which 12 people have been charged in connection with the rioting, according to the RAPSI legal news service.
Russian media earlier reported that Deinichenko had signed a police report saying “no emergency situations occurred” during the rally.
The violence at the rally reportedly erupted when a column of protesters became bottlenecked by narrow police cordons near the entrance to the square and then tried to break through.
Hundreds of demonstrators were briefly detained. Eighty-two police officers reported injuries. Pictures and videos showed that both Ponomaryov and Udaltsov were among the protesters at the scene when the clashes started.
Last month, as part of a separate investigation, prosecutors charged Udaltsov and fellow Left Front activist Leonid Razvozzhayev with plotting mass riots at the rally.
Ponomaryov, an outspoken supporter of large opposition protests, has also been under pressure from investigators lately in connection with a criminal case against Alexei Beltyukov, vice president of the state-funded Skolkovo Foundation.
Beltyukov is suspected of embezzling $750,000 that was claimed to have been paid to Ponomaryov for a series of lectures and research projects.
