FILE PHOTO: Grigory Melkonyants, the co-chair of Russia’s election monitoring group Golos (Voice), who is in custody after he was accused of cooperating with an "undesirable organisation", reacts inside an enclosure for defendants before a court hearing in Moscow, Russia February 24, 2025. REUTERS/Yulia Morozova/File Photo
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian prosecutor on Monday requested six years in prison for Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the independent election monitoring group Golos.
Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023, accused of organising the work of an "undesirable organisation". He has pleaded innocent.
Six years is the maximum term for the offence he is charged with. Prosecutor Ekaterina Frolova also demanded that he be banned from public activity for 10 years.
Golos first angered the Russian government by publicising evidence of alleged fraud in a 2011 parliamentary election that sparked opposition protests, and then in the presidential vote that returned President Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.
Human rights campaigners say the case against Melkonyants is part of a much wider crackdown on civil society that has intensified since the start of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Rights group OVD-Info says more than 1,600 people are currently imprisoned on political grounds. The Kremlin says it does not comment on individual cases but that Russia needs to uphold its laws and protect itself against subversive activity.
(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev; editing by Mark Heinrich)
