Opposition activists stage lone pickets to demand Pivovarov's release in Kostroma
MOSCOW. Aug 4 (Interfax) - A Russian opposition party, PARNAS, is staging a series of lone pickets in a bid to secure the release of the party's election campaign chief Andrei Pivovarov held in Kostroma.
"PARNAS Party members are staging a series of lone pickets across the country to demand the release of Pivovarov and no more harassment of the opposition," the party said on its website on Tuesday.
The protests are being held in Ulyanovsk, near the Altai Republic government building in Gorno-Altaisk, in Moscow's Red Square, in Krasnodar, in Novocheboksarsk in the Republic of Chuvashia, and outside the temporary detention center in Kostroma where Pivovarov is being held, the party said.
Party activists also took to the streets in Vologda, are picketing the government building in the Republic of Khakasia, and are rallying outside legislatures in St. Petersburg, in Smolensk and in Nizhny Novgorod.
Pivovarov was arrested along with a police officer in Kostroma in the early hours of July 28. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said at the time that the PARNAS activist had come to a policeman to check the authenticity of the personal data of the people who provided their signatures during the election campaign. The police officer invited Pivovarov to his office and asked him to wait. A while later police operatives walked into the room. Pivovarov and the policeman, who had been in the room, were apprehended and sent to the Russian Investigative Committee office for the Kostroma region.
Regional investigators launched a criminal inquiry into unauthorized access to computer information and abuse of office.
According to the inquiry, on the evening of July 27, a Kostroma regional police officer illegally provided a private individual with access to an integrated regional police databank containing passport details of the region's residents, intended for police use only.
On July 29 Pivovarov was remanded in custody by a court in Kostroma.