Word: kgb
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...Kremlin may have hoped that by jailing Mikhail Khodorkovsky on tax evasion charges, they would eliminate any political challenge represented by the oil tycoon. Instead, the prison experience may be honing Khodorkovsky's credentials as a future challenger to President Putin - and, say his lawyer and a former KGB man who worked for his oil company, prompting the authorities to resort to some old Soviet tricks to stop...
...watching soap operas. Khodorkovsky spends every day from 6 a.m. till 10 p.m. doing senseless manual labor and taking courses on glove-stitching. He is under constant monitoring by a team sent from Moscow of officials from the prisons department and the FSB (the security service that succeeded the KGB). He has twice been locked in solitary confinement, once for being in possession of a copy of camp regulations published in a newspaper, and once for having a cup of tea with Alexander Kuchma, 22, occupant of the neighboring bed in his 100-person barrack. These charges, says Khodorkovsky lawyer...
...expert in Soviet-era prison tactics sees a familiar pattern in the assault on Khodorkovsky. Alexei Kondaurov, a retired KGB major-general, a former official of Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos, and current member of the Russian legislature, recalls how other convicts, often mentally unstable, were recruited as agents and placed around a target prisoner. They don't need orders to assault a prisoner singled out by the administration for harsh treatment, Kondaurov says. "They just do it to seek lenience and rewards...
...Belorusians riled up - it has been the extent of the intimidation campaign that led up to it. The night before the election, all mobile phones in Minsk received text messages to the effect that those gathered in the square would be butchered. Earlier General Sukharenko, head of the Belarus KGB (which still goes by that notorious title), explained publicly that all those taking part in the street protest would be considered terrorists and get up to 20 years of jail under new anti-terrorist legislation. He claimed that his secret police had uncovered plots to overthrow the legitimate government with...
...problem with Russian politics is that increasingly, everything flows according to Putin’s cravings. Long gone are the days when Kremlin-watchers thought this sober former KGB officer would copy-cat feeble former President Boris Yeltsin. Damningly, when the Kremlin intervened to rectify most of the shady privatizations of his predecessor, media freedom was severely obstructed. The State took control of most media outlets and kept them, minimizing criticism within its borders...