Criminal Charges Denied Over Anti-Putin Activist Torture

Russian investigators refused on Thursday to open a criminal investigation into allegations by a leftist political activist that he was tortured into confessing to a plot to overthrow President Vladimir Putin. Leonid Razvozzhayev, a member of the Left Front political movement, made international headlines in mid-October when he said he had been abducted by "masked men" after applying for political asylum in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and spirited away to Moscow by his kidnappers. Razvozzhayev also told human rights workers who visited him in a Moscow pre-trial detention center that his abductors had threatened to kill him and his children if he did not sign a detailed confession. “A number of witnesses were questioned and their testimony indicated the unreliability of Razvozzhayev’s claims about his abduction and torture,” said Vladimir Markin, spokesperson for Russia’s Investigation Committee.

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