Watchdog

Armenian police have dropped a controversial criminal case against a youth activist who publicized alleged sexual and other abuse at a Yerevan boarding school for disabled children, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

In a statement, the Armenian Prosecutor-General's Office says Yerevan police have complied with a prosecutor's order to drop the charge of slander against Mariam Sukhudian.

They also announced a new criminal investigation was being launched into allegations that a former schoolteacher sexually abused some of his students. He was cleared last year of any wrongdoing.

Sukhudian was presented on March 10 with an award from the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan for her civic activism. U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch singled out her exposure of "neglect and abuse" of pupils at the school.

Sukhudian says she has no doubt that the publicity surrounding her case and the support of the U.S. Embassy were instrumental in persuading the authorities to drop the slander charge against her.

She added that she and other young people who worked at the school as volunteers in 2008 will closely monitor the new police probe and continue to pressure authorities to improve conditions there.

Police in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan have been accused of extrajudicial violence, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

A woman from the Bashkir city of Birsk today contacted the Committee Against Torture's office in Ufa, the republican capital, to report that her 22-year-old son Dmitry is in the hospital after being severely beaten by police.

She said police detained her son on February 10 near his home and took him to the police station. He was placed in the cell for intoxicated people. During this time she says her son was viciously beaten and his spine was fractured.

Dmitry said he does not drink alcohol and was not drunk.

Rustem Abdrakhmanov, an investigator for the Committee Against Torture in Ufa, told RFE/RL that Dmitry is in a neurosurgery ward. He confirmed that Dmitry's upper spine is broken.

Abdrakhmanov said he had met with Dmitry, whose condition is "grounds for concern."

Human rights activists have filed a lawsuit against the Birsk police and hope an investigation into the incident will be made.