From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 5/18/2005 4:14 AM Prosecutor Decides To Probe Papers After All
By Vladimir Kovalev STAFF WRITER Under pressure from human rights advocates, the City Prosecutor's Office has decided to open a criminal case over anti-Semitic articles printed in newspapers Za Russkoe Delo and Rus Pravoslavnaya.
It had previously rejected opening a criminal case and had decided that a warning to the newspaper's editors was sufficient.
On May 4, City Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev sent an official letter to the Federation Council saying that an additional examination of the publications would be made.
"I annul the decision made on April 22 because it was groundless and return the [investigation] materials for additional examination," Zaitsev wrote.
He told human rights advocates that his office is active in preventing and punishing crimes that are committed on grounds of national hatred. A special group of law enforcement officers has been formed to address the problem, Zaitsev said.
"The group's task is to monitor such crimes in the city, to coordinate the work of law enforcement bodies in their efforts to fight crimes committed on extremist grounds and to form a database of crimes that can be treated as committed on the grounds of national hatred," the prosecutor said.
The City Prosecutor's Office is investigating two criminal cases in relation to extremist publications in newspapers Nashe Otechesvo and Nash Narodny Nablyudatel, whose editors have both been charged with printing material inciting national hatred, the prosecutor said.
In repeated comments to The St. Petersburg Times, the editors of the newspapers keep denying the charges, saying all they have done is analyze historical materials.
The editors felt vindicated by a letter written by deputy city prosecutor Alexander Korsunov in April, which said the publications were not anti-Semitic.
"The articles contain guidelines on how Jewish people behave toward people of other nationalities, which is an attempt to look into this behavior and how it corresponds to the Criminal Code, to draw readers' attention to differences between various beliefs and their historical influence on the development of political situations in the world," Korsunov wrote in April.
Korsunov's letter contradicted an earlier conclusion made in March and signed by himself that said the newspapers should be prosecuted.
Human rights advocates remain skeptical about the motives of the city prosecutor's office and question if it is sincere when it says it wants to end extremism in the media.
"I have information that there are three groups of people working in the regional prosecutor's offices," Yury Vdovin, co-head of the city branch of human rights organization Citizens' Watch, said Friday in a telephone interview.
"One that believes they can use extremists to counter unrest if it suddenly appeared in the country," he said. "The second group shares their views and the third group just wants to hide the facts to make the situation to look better."
"That is why the prosecutor's office is changing its opinion from day to day," he said.
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