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Moscow Mayor’s Briefer Suspected of Assaulting Gay Rights Activist
British police has started examining a claim from an organizer of the Moscow Gay Pride March who accuses the Moscow Mayor’s spokesman of assault. The gay rights activist says he hopes British authorities will bring the spokesman to justice.
The Scotland Yard has launched a probe following an application from Nikolay Alexeev, a spokesperson for UK police told Kommersant Thursday. Nikolay Alexeev, an organizer of the Moscow Gay Pride March in 2006 which was broken up by Moscow police, confirmed the information.
Mr. Alexeev went to police following an incident on February 28 when Mayors of Moscow, London, Paris and Beijing met in the British capital. Yury Luzhkov’s counterparts denounced the dispersal of the Moscow gay parade as infringing sexual minorities’ rights. The Moscow mayor, however, made it clear that as long as he is in office, the Russian capital would not see gays marching in the city. “We are against the propaganda of homosexuality just like any other society would protect itself from promotion of tobacco and alcohol,” Mr. Luzhkov said.
At the news conference after the meeting, Nikolay Alexeev stood up and unfolded a flag with the symbol of the Moscow Gay Pride. As Mr. Aleexeev says, the Moscow mayor’s spokesman Sergey Tsoi came up to him shortly, trying to push him away and snatch the banner from his hands.
The police will finish the investigation next week to hand it over to prosecutors, Nikolay Alexeev said in an interview with Kommersant.
Sergey Tsoi had no immediate comment on Thursday.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 09, 2007
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