YouTube has pulled a posting of a Chechen rebel claiming responsibility for last week’s attacks on Moscow metro stations after a State Duma deputy accused Google of promoting terrorism via its video-sharing service.
The four-minute video of Doku Umarov was removed April 5 because viewers said it was “inappropriate” by offering avenues for promoting “hatred and violence,” Alla Zabrovskaya, a spokeswoman for Google in Moscow, said by phone Wednesday.
The decision wasn’t political, Zabrovskaya said.
Earlier on April 5, United Russia Deputy Robert Shlegel called on the Federal Security Service to investigate Google’s activities in Russia because of the Umarov video on YouTube.
“Is Google supporting terrorists?” Shlegel wrote on his blog. “In that case, our security service has to probe what this company does in Russia because Russian Google is under Russia’s rule of law."
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