Activist arrested in Russia for marijuana days after journalist released in groundless drugs case

A Russian journalist has been accused of financing terrorism and an activist of buying marijuana days after a drugs case against an investigative reporter here was closed under public pressure.

Martin Kochesoko, a Circassian activist who had criticised state policies on minorities, has been placed under arrest in Nalchik after officers allegedly found 263 grams of marijuana in his car last week, police told state media on Thursday evening.

They claimed Mr Kochesoko had made a confession, even though prisoner rights monitors who visited him in confinement previously said he had denied his guilt.

Pro-government media had previously smeared him as a drug addict and American spy. He faces up to 11 years in prison. More than 3,700 people have signed an online petition to free him.

The controversial narcotics case comes after Ivan Golunov, a reporter for the popular Latvia-based site Meduza who exposed corruption among Moscow city officials, was released amid an international outcry.

The interior minister admitted the charges against him were groundless, and Vladimir Putin fired two high-ranking Moscow police officers. More than 550 people were arrested when a Moscow rally in support of Mr Golunov went ahead on Wednesday as a protest against police abuse of drug laws.

Officers have been accused of frequently planting drugs on innocent people, and a third of Russian inmates are in prison on narcotics convictions.

Oyub Titiyev, a human rights activist in Chechnya, will be released on parole this month after being convicted of controversial marijuana charges, but several other activists and journalists who exposed officials' malfeasance remain in prison.

MPs have called for the punishments under the “people's article” against narcotics use to be relaxed.

Cases like that of Mr Kochesoko, an outspoken opponent of a 2018 law that promoted Russian over minority languages in education, have suggested no broader thaw is imminent.

Chernovik, an independent newspaper in Dagestan, said on Friday its editor Abdulmumin Gadzhiyev had been arrested on charges of financing a terrorist organisation and could face up to life in prison.

Mr Gadzhiyev allegedly sent money to Israil Akhmednabiyev, also known as Abu Umar Sasitlinsky, founder of popular Islamic charities who is wanted by Russia for allegedly “contributing to terrorist activity” and has been accused of recruiting for Isil.

Chernovik called the allegations “absurd,” and the major newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets dubbed the investigation of Mr Gadzhiyev the “new Golunov case”.

Also on Friday, a court in Rostov-on-Don extended until September the house arrest of Anastasia Shevchenko, an activist for Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Russia group and the first to be charged under Russia's law against “undesirable” foreign organisations.

She was unable to leave house arrest to visit the hospital when her 17-year-old special needs daughter died there in January.

Ms Shevchenko organised a debate before regional elections last year, when the UK-based branch of Open Russia was declared undesirable for allegedly “discrediting” election results.

The human rights group Memorial has declared her a prisoner of conscience.