Stalinist tactics on Russian dissent could stumble in Internet era

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny faces charges of embezzlement, accusations of inciting violence in the Caucasus and the threat of having his law license revoked. A female punk rock trio awaits sentencing for appealing to the Virgin Mary to throw President Vladimir Putin out of office. And Putin's allies in parliament recently passed laws punishing demonstrators and branding civil rights groups with overseas supporters "foreign agents."

The crackdown on dissent in recent weeks has Kremlin watchers making comparisons with Josef Stalin's paranoia-driven repressions in the early Soviet era for their power to scare opponents into silent submission.

But the politics of fear may not work so reliably, Russia analysts say, in the age of the Internet and toppled authoritarian regimes across the Middle East. And, the experts say, Putin and his hierarchy may be underestimating the potential for global cultural stars and social media to incite a backlash against their efforts to stifle dissent.

The three feminist rockers fell afoul of Putin's regime when they belted out a "punk prayer" at a Moscow cathedral in February that ended with a heavenly appeal to "throw out Putin." They were charged with hooliganism and inciting religious hatred, prosecuted in what many called a show trial this week and are awaiting an Aug. 17 verdict widely expected to send them to prison for at least three years.

Superstar Madonna, in Russia for a concert tour, showed her solidarity with the jailed rockers by sporting their signature black ski mask at a performance Tuesday and scrawling the group's name across her bare back. Sting, Yoko Ono, Pete Townsend of the Who and Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant also have appealed for the trio's release in a rising outcry against free-speech infringements.

The opposition in Russia may look weak now, but "there's a potential spark out there," said Paul Gregory, a Russian scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

"Putin clearly watched with some trepidation as the 'Arab Spring' unfolded," Gregory said of the swift spread of uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria last year. Just imagine, he said, if something were to happen to one of the twentysomething rockers while in prison, like a suspicious death or suicide.

"I don't want to suggest something like this, but it's the kind of thing that could bring millions of people out on the streets," he said. "The people who can help, believe it or not, are those in the artistic community, like Madonna. The Kremlin is scared to death of her. These artists can't be written off as foreign agents, and they speak to millions and millions of Russians."

Putin's strategy throughout his 12 years in high office has been to cast challenges to his authority as bankrolled by foreign enemies, and it has been successful in portraying him as a strong leader and defender of Russian sovereignty in the provinces, said Andrew Weiss, director of the Rand Center for Russia and Eurasia and a former National Security Council official during the Clinton administration.

But blaming foreigners for the 100,000-strong protest in Moscow after December's tainted parliamentary elections doesn't play as well with the educated, technology-savvy populations of Russia's biggest cities, Weiss said.

The unprecedented eruption of anti-Putin protesters shocked the Kremlin and spurred its Security Council chief, former KGB official Nikolai Patrushev, to call for "reasonable regulation" of the Internet and social media to prevent their use by "criminals and terrorist groups."

"There may be people in the Russian establishment who want to block Facebook and Twitter, but I doubt they could pull it off," Weiss said. He sees a leadership that is out of touch with the wired generation of Russians with no memory of the Soviet era, when the communist government could control movement and access to information.

Laws that criminalize public assembly and the defamation of officials are acceptable to Russian peasants and workers in the provincial rust belt cities, he said. But it remains to be seen how long tactics that were refined decades ago will succeed in stifling dissent, Weiss said.

Navalny, the 36-year-old lawyer whose disjointed political alliance failed to get much traction against Putin's United Russia last year, has reacted to the criminal charges and moves to undermine his credibility with regular postings on the blog of his nonprofit Endowment for Fighting Corruption. The posts have included reports of his discovery this week of listening devices embedded throughout his Moscow apartment.

"They're using a bazooka to shoot at a mouse," Weiss said of the Kremlin's excessive moves against the opposition. "The big question is how effective these steps will be in tamping down what Putin and his top officials should be worried about."

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Photo: Russian jail matrons escort punk group members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, top, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina into a Moscow court where their trial concluded Wednesday. Credit: Sergei Chirikov / European Pressphoto Agency

Alleged Mexico cartel figure 'Reina del Pacifico' sent to U.S.

She told the cops she was just an innocent housewife who dabbled a little in the rental market.

She had her own narcocorrido, or drug ballad, sung by an outfit called Los Tucanes de Tijuana.

And when she was fighting her extradition to the U.S. on cocaine trafficking charges, Sandra Avila Beltran, the so-called Reina del Pacifico, or Queen of the Pacific, found a way to have a doctor visit her in prison to administer her Botox treatments,  a characteristic demonstration of vanity that has made her such an enthralling folk figure to so many Mexicans here. The episode also pointed to the often-squirrelly security standards in the Mexican penal system.

But from now on, Avila -- Mexico’s high-heeled human telenovela -- will be a drama for the United States to ponder: On Thursday, the Mexican attorney general announced that she has been extradited to the U.S.

Avila is believed to have been a rare figure -- a powerful woman -- in Latin America’s testosterone-saturated drug world, and her story has become a kind of genre to itself, particularly with the success of “La Reina del Sur,” the wildly popular Telemundo telenovela to  which Avila’s life is sometimes compared. (In the U.S., the Showtime cable network has had similar success with "Weeds," a tragicomic tale of the life of the fictional Nancy Botwin, a weed-dealing, Starbucks-slurping soccer mom.)

Avila, reportedly in her early 50s, was arrested in 2007 in Mexico City with her Colombian boyfriend, Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez, whom officials claimed was also a powerful drug-world figure. Officials allegedthat  Avila served as a key connection between Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and wholesale drug sources in Colombia.

A Mexican judge acquitted Avila of drug-related charges in 2010, and she waged a long legal fight against extradition. On Thursday, Mexican officials turned her over to U.S. marshals at Toluca International Airport. She is expected to appear in U.S. Federal District Court in Florida to answer allegations that she coordinated, stored and moved large drug shipments destined for the U.S.

Avila was reportedly the product of well-established drug-world families, and Mexican journalists alleged that her affairs with powerful male drug kingpins helped her rise to a position of power. According to the Associated Press, authorities became suspicious of her in 2001 when her son was kidnapped and she was allegedly able to pay a multimillion-dollar ransom to get him back.

Video of Avila being escorted by officers once she was in custody -- with a pair of chic torn jeans, stylish raven hair and a devil-may-care grin -- only fueled public fascination with her. Authorities eventually seized 225 of Avila’s properties in the state of Jalisco, including two tanning salons.

In their corrido, Los Tucanes called her “that big businesswoman -- a very heavy lady.”

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Photo: Sandra Avila Beltran, shown  in 2007,  has been extradited to the U.S. Credit:  European Pressphoto Agency 

Murder trial of Chinese official's wife: charges uncontested

BEIJING--Gu Kailai's court session Thursday for allegedly killing a British businessman lasted all of seven hours.

In the proceeding at the Hefei Intermediate Court, there was no jury to get hung up on the nuances of her case, no defense counsel to cross-examine witnesses -- in fact hardly any witnesses at all. The evidence was presented in the form of prepared statements, with the exception of forensic evidence showing that businessman Neil Heywood was poisoned.

At the end of the session, a court official held a news conference at a nearby hotel to announce Gu, 54,  a lawyer and wife of former Politburo member Bo Xilai, and a co-defendant, Zhang Xiaojun, 33, the family’s butler, had confessed to killing Heywood.

"The defendants did not dispute the accusation of intentional homicide,” deputy director of the court Tang Yigan told foreign reporters, who had been kept from the courthouse, waiting in the rain behind a police cordon.

The 41-year-old Heywood, a long-time family friend, was found dead Nov. 15 in a hotel room in Chongqing, the central Chinese city where Gu's husband was Communist Party secretary.  Reading a prepared statement, Tang said Gu had invited Heywood to visit her in Chongqing with the intention of killing him because of a financial dispute.

At the hotel, she and Heywood drank. After getting drunk and vomiting, Heywood requested water.  The two defendants had spiked it with poison in advance and poured it into Heywood’s mouth, authorities said.

“All the facts are clear and the evidence sufficient,” Tang stated.

Although Heywood’s body was promptly cremated, one of the police officials involved had taken a blood sample in advance. And closed-circuit video footage also showed Gu going into the hotel room where the body was discovered.

Gu was taken into custody in March, under a form of extrajudicial detention known as shuanggui, which is reserved for Communist Party members and officials.  Although her family and Zhang’s both hired defense lawyers, they were not permitted to meet with them and the lawyers were not in court. Instead, both were assigned court-appointed lawyers.

Despite Gu’s reported confession, a formal verdict has yet to be delivered by the court and Tang did not say when they would take place. Under the Chinese legal system, the sentence is handed down at the same time.

Chinese law carries the death penalty for premeditated murder, but there are hints she will be spared, with the blame increasingly placed on Heywood.  The prepared statement Thursday said Gu believed “Heywood physically endangered the physical safety of her son.”

Heywood had lived in China for nearly two decades and was married to a Chinese woman, with whom he had two children. His and Gu’s families were close and he had helped her son, 24-year-old Bo Guagua, get into his own alma mater, the prestigious Harrow boarding school in London.

The exact nature of the spat is unclear. Chinese investigators have been probing allegations that Gu sent millions of dollars of possibly illegal earnings abroad through Heywood and other foreign businessmen.

Heywood, some suggest, was not being well-paid and threatened to blow the whistle on Gu and her son, who was living in expensive apartments abroad and seen driving luxury cars.

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Photo: This video image taken from CCTV shows Gu Kailai, second from left, being taken into the Intermediate People's Court in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei on Thursday. Credit: Associated Press

 

 

Former Mexico PRI governor pleads guilty in drug-trafficking case

MEXICO CITY -- In one of the most high-profile drug prosecutions of a Mexican politician, a former state governor has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to charges that he helped launder millions of dollars for cocaine traffickers.

The plea was entered Thursday by Mario Villanueva, former governor of Quintana Roo state, home to the posh resort town of Cancun.

Villanueva was extradited to the United States in 2010 and could face a sentence of up to 20 years.

Before a judge in U.S. federal court, he said he had participated in a conspiracy from 1993 to 2001 to conceal the origin of illicit drug money (link in Spanish).

The original indictment said Villanueva "was paid between $400,000 and $500,000 in cash for each load of cocaine that [the Juarez cartel] brought into and shipped out of Quintana Roo," which added up to millions of dollars in the 1990s. "In return, [he] provided state and federal police and other resources to offload, transport, store and protect the cocaine shipments."

Villanueva's case involved the laundering of profits through money transfers administered by Consuelo Marquez, a Lehman Bros. investment representative who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2005, the Reuters news agency reported.

As part of the plea agreement, other drug-trafficking charges were dropped. Villanueva served six years in a Mexican prison for money laundering before his extradition to the U.S.

Villanueva was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that held authoritarian control oo Mexico for seven decades, until it was ousted in 2000, and was often accused of working with drug traffickers. This year, the PRI will return to power with the election of Enrique Pena Nieto as president. He has said he will not make deals with traffickers.

Still, the Villanueva case reawakens the old ghosts of the PRI's past. In a statement, however, the PRI in Quintana Roo said Villanueva's confession was "regrettable" but that it would not have an effect on the party today because the case was so old (link in Spanish). Villanueva served as governor from 1993 to 1999.

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Photo: Mexican police escort former Quintana Roo Gov. Mario Villanueva in 2007. Credit: Mario Vazquez de la Torre / EPA

 

Tetra Pak heir Hans Kristian Rausing sentenced in Britain

LONDON -- Hans Kristian Rausing, a wealthy heir to the Tetra Pak drink cartons fortune, Wednesday received a 10-month suspended jail sentence from a British court after pleading guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of his wife.

Rausing, 49, also received a two-month suspended sentence for driving under the influence of drugs and was ordered to complete a residential drug rehabilitation program, to start immediately,  officials said.

Eva Rausing’s body was found in advanced state of decomposition July 9 after her husband was stopped and arrested on suspicion of  driving under the influence of drugs.  Drugs and drug paraphernalia were  found in his car. 

After questioning Rausing, police found his 48-year-old wife’s body under piles of clothing and plastic bags in the couple’s luxury apartment in West London's Chelsea district. Authorities believe she died in early May.

The cause of death remains undetermined for the American-born daughter of a wealthy Pepsi executive. Officials have said an autopsy showed that cocaine and amphetamines in her system.

Eva Rausing had entered a drug rehabilitation program in California before returning to London in April, according to news reports.

Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson on Wednesday told Rausing his behavior was “an illustration of the utterly destructive effects of drug misuse.”

The judge said that despite the advantages of wealth enjoyed by Rausing and his wife and periods of rehabilitation,  "Your relapse into the misuse of drugs, together with that of your wife, destroyed all that.”

In a statement read in court, Rausing said he had been “traumatized” by his wife’s death and did “not have a very coherent recollection of events leading up to and since Eva’s death....  I tried to carry on as if her death had not happened and batted away any inquiries about her.”

Rausing's lawyer, Alexander Cameron, brother of Prime Minister David Cameron, reportedly told the court Rausing acted “when as Shakespeare would put it, the balance of his mind was disturbed.”

Gary Dolby, head of homicide for the prosecutor's office in London, said in a statement:

"Mr. Rausing has well documented personal problems which no doubt contributed to his actions in the weeks following his wife's death. However, he went to some lengths to conceal her body despite numerous opportunities to tell someone what had happened. This resulted in Mrs. Rausing's family being unaware of her death for some time after it happened.

"His actions were unlawful and it is right that he now has a criminal conviction."

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Photo: Eva Rausing and her husband, Hans Kristian Rausing, in London. Credit: Alan Davidson / Associated Press

 

Lennox the dog is put to death in Northern Ireland

LONDON — After months on death row and a transatlantic campaign howling for his release, time has run out for Lennox the dog. He has been put to sleep, officials in Northern Ireland announced Wednesday.

In a terse statement, the Belfast City Council said it has humanely destroyed “one of the most unpredictable and dangerous dogs” that its appointed expert had ever come across. The council expressed regret for the court-ordered euthanasia, which it carried out for reasons of public safety despite “a sustained campaign of abuse” against city officials, including threats of harm and death.

The plight of Lennox, a pit bull terrier-type mutt, had inspired a viral social-media campaign in both Britain and the U.S., where animal-rights activists and others demanded that the dog be returned to its owner. Thousands of people signed an online petition for a stay of execution; First Minister Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s top leader, and Lennox Lewis, the boxing champion who shares an obvious connection to the dog, joined the chorus urging mercy.

In its odyssey through Northern Ireland’s legal system, Lennox’s case almost resembled that of a human offender convicted of a capital crime (except that the death penalty — for two-legged criminals, at any rate — is outlawed in Britain).

Judge OKs missiles on apartment rooftop for London Olympics

LONDON -- The British military can deploy a surface-to-air missile battery atop an apartment building during the Olympics, a judge said Tuesday, throwing out a challenge by residents who argued that their home would become a prime target for terrorists.

The battery would be capable of launching warheads toward suspicious aircraft at up to three times the speed of sound. The government is planning to set up six such installations around London as part of a massive security operation for the Summer Games that will also include 13,500 troops, more than Britain has stationed in Afghanistan.

Tenants of the Fred Wigg Tower apartment high-rise in East London, near the Olympic Park, took the government to court, saying that it failed to consult them properly in deciding to plunk down an anti-aircraft missile battery on their rooftop and alleging that their right to a peaceful home life had been violated.

But a High Court judge dismissed that challenge Tuesday. Justice Charles Haddon-Cave said the military was within its rights to choose a residential building as a missile-launching platform and that its outreach efforts to the community, while not obligatory, were “immaculate.”

Residents of the apartment building were laboring under “something of a misapprehension” as to the nature of the weaponry and of the risks posed by it, Britain’s Press Assn. quoted Haddon-Cave as saying.

Critics have described the government’s security arrangements for the Summer Olympics, which kick off July 27, as overkill. In addition to the missiles, the military is also mooring its biggest warship in the Thames and patrolling the skies with spy planes and helicopters with snipers.

The security budget for the Games now stands at about $875 million, double the originally intended amount.

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Photo: Residents of the Fred Wigg Tower in East London, shown above, lost their bid in court to stop their rooftop from being used as a missile base during the upcoming Olympic Games. Credit: Matt Dunham / Associated Press.

Singapore retains harsh death penalty policy after review

After a yearlong review, Singapore officials announced in Parliament on Monday that mandatory death sentences in a dozen categories of serious offenses will be retained because they have broad public support and have proved effective in deterring crime.

The review, which kept executions on hold for more than a year, did result in authorities allowing courts discretion to issue life sentences instead of death in some cases involving minor drug dealers who provide substantial assistance to the Central Narcotics Bureau.

Singapore has been criticized by anti-death-penalty groups as having the highest per capita execution rate in the world in the few years when the city-state has released information about its exercise of capital punishment. Officials reported in 2004 that 138 people had been executed over the previous five years, in a population of 5.3 million.

As part of the parliamentary discussion of the death penalty review and minor legal amendments, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean reported that 35 prisoners are on death row, 28 of them for drug offenses and seven for murder.

"The death penalty has been an important part of our criminal justice system for a very long time," Teo told Parliament, according to Channel NewsAsia. "Singaporeans understand that the death penalty has been an effective deterrent and an appropriate punishment for very serious offenses, and largely support it. As part of our penal framework, it has contributed to keeping crime and the drug situation under control."

Britain heartbroken at Andy Murray's Wimbledon defeat

LONDON — There was hardly a dry eye at Wimbledon as Andy Murray fell short Sunday to tennis legend Roger Federer, who powered  his way to a seventh victory in the English grass-court, Grand Slam classic. 

Murray had the crowd and the country — from his homeland of Scotland down to London — holding its collective breath in hope of finally seeing one of their own win the Wimbledon men’s singles after 76 years. But it was not to be.

The Murray family was overcome with emotion, mother Judy Murray who coached her son in his early years, his girlfriend, Kim Sears, who broke down in tears, and Murray himself choking up as he paid tribute to Federer and to his own supporters. “Thanks to everyone who has supported me. You did a great job. It's always tough,” he managed to say.

Photos: Britain hit by 'Murray Mania'

Murray told a BBC interviewer later, “I was really upset at the end because ... when I play at Wimbledon I feel that support and I want to try and obviously win for the nation, and I was upset I couldn’t do it.”

But after the tears, Judy Murray tweeted, “Lots to celebrate…. Amazing day. Amazing tourney. Amazing son.”

“It would have been great for Britain if he’d won,” said tennis fan Miryam Dragonetti, 33, a mother of three. “But it was fantastic play, really exciting up to the last set, where I felt Murray was beginning to lose it.”  

The streets of Murray’s home town of Dunblane in Scotland emptied as townsfolk watched their local hero on TV screens at home, in bars and at the clubhouse where the young Murray took his first tennis lessons.  After the grueling three-hour, 20-minute court struggle ended in heartbreaking defeat to the pride of Switzerland, the small town filled with disappointed but supportive fans.

Photos: Wimbledon men's final: Federer vs. Murray

One of them, Ian Conway, vice president of Scotland's national tennis association and a longtime friend of the Murrays, told a BBC-TV interviewer that the tears were understandable after such a battle against a great player such as Federer who has now won 17 Grand Slam tourneys. At the same time, “Andy will have learned a lot from it, he’ll be back, please believe it — the nation will be behind him.”

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Photo: Andy Murray of Great Britain reacts after losing to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon men's tennis finals Sunday in London. Credit: Paul Gilham / Getty Images.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange defies British police

LONDON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has defied a British police request to report to a London police station to begin extradition proceedings to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault allegations.

Assange, who has won wide public support for revealing diplomatic and international business secrets on the WikiLeaks website, took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy this month, seeking political asylum.

Susan Benn, a member of the Julian Assange Defense Fund, read a statement outside the embassy Friday saying that Assange "has been advised that he should decline to comply with the police request."

It was no sign of disrespect, she insisted, but "under both international and domestic U.K. law, asylum assessments take priority over extradition claims."

"The issues faced by Mr. Assange are serious," she went on.  At stake was "the life and liberty" of Assange and those associated with WikiLeaks.

Before his move to the embassy, Assange, who denies wrongdoing, had been living under house arrest in Britain since December 2010, most of it spent in the country mansion of one of his supporters.

He has lost several appeals against his extradition; he reportedly fears that he could later be extradited to the United States, where he could face charges of espionage.