A court in Yaroslavl has barred a member of the opposition RPR-Parnas party from taking part in the region's upcoming parliamentary election because of his dual citizenship, an election official said.
Igor Borisov, head of Electoral Rights Public Institute's council, said that prosecutors asked the regional court to withdraw Vladimir Kara-Murza because he has both British and Russian passports, which disqualifies him from running for a public position under Russian law, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.
The local election committee registered a list of members from the party last week. Borisov said that only Kara-Murza would not be allowed to participate in the election on Sept. 8, while other members of the party could still challenge for places in the local parliament.
The party's lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said that the court's decision was illegal as in 2010 European Court of Human Rights ruled that politicians can run in elections in any country to which they hold citizenship, Lenta.ru reported. Prokhorov said he would appeal the decision.
Earlier in August, the local election committee refused to register the list of candidates from the Civil Platform party — founded by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov — saying that the party hadn't opened a bank account for the campaign on time. But the party's fiscal agent said she had been deliberately detained by police while trying to open the account and was only released after the deadline had passed.
Local officials denied the accusation.
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