An election monitor who recorded alleged violations in a local Moscow-region vote was hospitalized with a ruptured spleen, which ultimately had to be removed, after being attacked by a group of men, a news report said.
Stanislav Pozdnyakov was monitoring an election on April 26 in the Moscow region city of Balashikha when he claimed to have witnessed the stuffing of a ballot box, the OVD Info news site reported Sunday. A group of eight men later arrived in a BMW with no license plates and severely beat him and another man Dmitry Nesterov, OVD Info reported, citing Pozdnyakov's friend Dmitry Georgiyevsky.
Pozdnyakov initially reported the incident to police, but noticed strange bleeding a few days later and was taken to Moscow's Sklifosovsky hospital where he reportedly had his spleen removed.
