No food and literal couch surfing Twenty-four hours in the life of an opposition candidate for the Moscow City Duma

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A Moscow City Election Commission working group rejected Lyubov Sobol’s appeal of a local commission’s decision not to register her as a candidate for the Moscow City Duma elections in September. Sobol, an attorney for Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, attended the working group’s hearing. She said her arguments were not considered in the commission’s decision.

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Sobol announced that she would continue holding the hunger strike she began on July 13 inside the Moscow City Election Commission building. She vowed to stop only if she was granted a meeting with Russia’s Central Election Commission Chair, Ella Pamfilova, and subsequently registered as a Moscow City Duma candidate.

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Moscow City Election Commission guards carried Sobol out of the building by picking up the couch on which she was sitting. Sobol was arrested immediately afterwards.

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Sobol was released about two hours after her arrest, evidently without having any police reports submitted against her.

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Sobol was ordered to appear at Russia’s Investigative Committee for questioning at 11:00 AM. She said the summons did not indicate any reasons for the interrogation or the criminal case under which it would fall.

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Moscow City Election Commission representatives announced that they would ask the Investigative Committee to examine whether Sobol’s actions might constitute a felony under Russia’s law against interfering with election procedures. A member of the Election Commission also explained that the couch bearing Sobol was carried out of the building not because Sobol was on it but for other reasons entirely: Dmitry Reut told RIA Novosti, “Our guards didn’t take out Sobol, they took out the couch to get rid of parasites — bedbugs and that kind of thing. They didn’t touch her directly. She was sitting on the couch, and they took out the couch.”

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Pavel Chikov, who leads the human rights organization Agora, submitted a request to Russia’s Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare asking for an inspection that would verify whether the Moscow City Election Commission building is actually suffering a parasite infestation that might bring it below sanitation standards.

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Sobol arrived at the central branch of Moscow’s Investigative Committee for questioning. She refused to respond to investigators, citing her right to remain silent under Article 51 of the Russian Constitution. She also refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement.