Watchdog

A court in Moscow has sentenced a man who took part in an antigovernment protest on March 26 to eight months in a so-called colony settlement for attacking a police officer.

The Tver district court on May 18 found Yury Kuly guilty of causing bodily harm to a law-enforcement officer.

The March 26 rally, one of the largest protests in Russia in years, was not sanctioned by authorities.

A colony settlement is an open prison type of penitentiary, where convicts live close to an industrial facility or a farm where they work.

Kuly pleaded guilty and apologized to the officer, who filed the lawsuit.

Kuly was the first participant in the March 26 protests across Russia, who was convicted.

He and three other people -- Aleksandr Shpakov, Stanislav Zimovets, and Andrei Kosykh -- were arrested on suspicion of attacking the policeman at the rally.

Police detained more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone over the anticorruption rallies organized by opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the biggest demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin's government since a wave of protests in 2011-12.

Based on reporting by Meduza and TASS

The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling on the authorities in Russia's Chechnya region to allow international human rights organizations to conduct a "credible investigation into the alleged crimes against men perceived to be gay" in the North Caucasus republic.

The resolution, which passed with overwhelming support on May 18, also demands authorities end what it says is a campaign of persecution and "immediately release those who are still illegally detained."

It "deplores the unwillingness of local authorities to investigate and prosecute the serious violations directed specifically at individuals based on their sexual orientation, and reminds the authorities that the rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression are universal rights and apply to all."

Russia has faced increasing pressure from human rights groups and Western governments following an April 1 report by the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on evidence of the torture and murder of gay men in Chechnya.

Since the Novaya Gazeta report, gay men from Chechnya have given personal accounts to RFE/RL and other media of their escape from the abuse they faced in the region, run by Kremlin-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who rights activists accuse of cultivating a culture of abuse and impunity.

After weeks of silence on the issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 5 that he would speak to top law enforcement officials about the allegations, but also suggested that the reports are merely "rumors."

With reporting by RFE/RL Brussels correspondent Rikard Jozwiak