The Russian State Duma with the majority-led pro-Kremlin United Russia party voted on Friday to strip a Communist legislator of his immunity in what the opposition called an intimidation campaign.
The proposal to authorize a criminal case against Vladimir Bessonov was also backed by the Liberal Democratic Party, considered to be an opposition party but often accused of siding with the Kremlin. The Communists and A Just Russia opposed the decision.
Bessonov is accused of beating up a police officer dispersing an allegedly illegal rally in Rostov-on-Don in December.
He dismissed the accusations against him and said the police abused their authority during the crackdown.
Opposition figures also said on Friday the case was politically motivated.
“The State Duma wants to strip immunity for political motives, not fraud,” said senior A Just Russia member Olga Dmitriyeva. “But the whole point of deputy’s immunity is to protect a lawmaker in his political activity.”
“It was a farce and outrage. We don't have a parliament anymore,” Dmitriyeva’s party colleague Gennady Gudkov, one of the leaders of anti-Kremlin protests ongoing in Moscow since December, wrote on his Twitter.
Only a handful of federal lawmakers were stripped of their immunity in post-Soviet Russia. The most recent case was Liberal Democrat Ashot Yegiazaryan, deprived of his legal privileges in 2010 due to an ongoing case on fraud charges.
United Russia denied any political motivation in the case, as did the Prosecutor General’s Office, which also noted that Bessonov faces no arrest so far because detaining him would require a separate Duma vote.
The investigators did not specify why they waited for seven months before investigating the case. The opposition and many political analysts say the Kremlin has mounted a pressure campaign against its enemies since May, when a mass rally in Moscow ended in riots.
Rally legislation was radically tightened after the May riots, houses of opposition leaders searched and many of them were reportedly threatened with criminal persecution over their actions.
