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Andrei Kulagin: Missing Russian Rights Activist's Body Found

by Amy Judd | July 22, 2009 at 07:41 pm

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Andrei Kulagin, the missing Russian human rights activist's body has been found. Andrei Kulagin disappeared two months ago. He headed the local branch of Spravedivost, a human rights organization about 1,000 km north of Moscow.

Only recently activist Natalia Estemirova was killed; she was a Chechen human rights activist.

"The body of Andrei Kulagin, a resident of Petrozavodsk, was discovered on July 10 in a quarry near the Klyuchevaya neighborhood of Petrozavodsk," a source in Karelian law enforcement told Interfax news agency.

It is not known how Kulagin died at this time, but he was found in a sand pit.
Spravedlivost's leader Andrei Stolbunov said this on the organization's website:

"Human rights activists are the exposed nerves of civil society. They are sharply responsive to injustices and are very often at the front of the fight for other people's rights," Stolbunov wrote, linking the death to that of Estemirova and murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Kulagin was last seen leaving his home late at night after receiving a phone call.

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sara star

at 20:26 on July 22nd, 2009

Meanwhile, the case of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya is being retried, starting Aug 5.

A Moscow court will start preliminary hearings in August for the retrial of three suspects in the 2006 murder of reporter Anna Politkovskaya, a lawyer for her family said Wednesday.

“A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5,” Anna Stavitskaya told Interfax.

Babel-Fish

at 21:10 on July 22nd, 2009

It simply does not pay to be an active civil rights activist in Russia, but brave Russians carry on waving that flag. I salute them and wish them power to their cause and condemn those that want to cull freedom of speech.