Liberal opposition leader Ilya Yashin is to be questioned Tuesday as a witness in the criminal case against low-profile leftist opposition leader Leonid Razvozzhayev, who is currently in detention on suspicion of plotting mass riots.
Yashin has been called to testify for another criminal case against Razvozzhayev — this one on charges of deliberately providing false testimony by accusing an investigator of abducting and torturing him in October, shortly before his arrest, the Investigative Committee said in a statement on its official website.
Investigators say Razvozzhayev knowingly provided the false testimony at a December hearing into the mass riots case. They conducted a check into Razvozzhayev's earlier claims of abduction and torture but found no evidence to corroborate his story, the statement said.
Yashin's questioning comes just a day after Moscow's Basmanny District Court refused to return a large sum of money that had been confiscated from his Moscow apartment during a search in June.
The search was conducted as part of the criminal case against a number of opposition leaders for allegedly plotting mass riots, Interfax reported.
Investigators said at Monday's hearing that they had "grounds to believe" that the 123,000 rubles ($4,000) and $12,500 seized from Yashin was "received illegally" and may have been meant to finance mass riots in Moscow, Interfax said.
The criminal case into plotting mass riots was prompted by state-owned television channel NTV's documentary-style film "Anatomy of a Protest-2," which accused opposition figures Razvozzhayev, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and fellow activist Konstantin Lebedev of discussing ways to sponsor mass riots in Moscow with Georgian politician Givi Targamadze.
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