Boris Vishnevsky, a municipal lawmaker in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, said on November 20 that well-known rights activist Nina Katerli has died at the age of 89. Katerli defended several high-profile persons at politically motivated trials, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other former leaders of the Yukos oil company in the early 2000s. Katerli was a grandmother of theater director Yevgenia Berkovich, who is currently in pretrial detention on charges of justifying terrorism in the production of a play about Russian women who married Muslim men and moved to Syria. Berkovich maintains her innocence. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.
