A criminal case against a historian who researched repressed German settlers in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia is now being transferred to the investigative committee of the general prosecutor’s office, according to a statement by authorities.

The case against Professor Mikhail Suprun and Police Colonel Aleksandr Dudarev had elicited a strong public outcry, prompting the investigation. According to the general prosecutor’s office (SKP), Suprun received a grant in 2007 from the German Red Cross and a German historical research society to work with forty thousand archival documents located in Arkhangelsk. He then built an electronic database of five thousand settlers of German and Polish heritage, repatriated from German territory to the Arkhangelsk oblast at the end of World War II.

“The information collected by Suprun contained biographical information, the composition of family ties, facts and grounds for moving…and information about service in the German army,” ...

A group of prominent journalists, politicians, and citizen activists in St. Petersburg have signed a petition demanding that a case against human rights activist Grigory Solominsky be dropped.

Solominsky was detained after an apparent clash with police on October 9. A group of men in plain clothes, believed to be officers of a regional St. Petersburg police department, had blocked off access to the Khasansky market complex. When Solominsky asked them for official identification, he was beaten into a concussion, thrown into a car without police license plates, and taken to the 13th Police Precinct.

Although the beating was captured on video, prosecutors have refused to initiate criminal proceedings against the police. Instead, a suit was brought against Solominsky, charging him with “public insult of a representative of authority.” The charge carries a sentence of 6 months to 1 year of remedial labor. Police have ...