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Moscow Police to Interrogate Ekho Moskvy Editor for Publishing Navalny Blog

Ekho Moskvy chief editor Alexei Venediktov

Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio station has said that police will interrogate him after a blog post by opposition leader Alexei Navalny was published on the station's website.

“Employees of the Interior Ministry came to Ekho about a court case against Navalny — they want to interrogate the editor-in-chief for publishing his blog post,” Venediktov tweeted on Tuesday.

The Interior Ministry have filed a court case on behalf of former investigator Pavel Karpov, accusing Navalny of slander.

The Interior Ministry filed the case because Navalny wrote about a film in his blogs and social media pages that accused Karpov of being involved in the death of Hermitage Capital employee Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Magnitsky died in an isolation cell in a Moscow prison in 2009.

His colleagues accused the Russian authorities of arresting Magnitsky after he had uncovered corruption scandals, which involved — among others — employees of the Interior Ministry. In 2012, the United States approved the so called “Magnitsky Bill” — a list of sanctions on individuals believed to be involved in his death. Pavel Karpov is among them.

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