Margareta Cederfelt and Steve CohenCOPENHAGEN/WASHINGTON, 17 April 2023 – After a Moscow municipal court found Vladimir Kara-Murza guilty on charges of treason today, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Margareta Cederfelt (Sweden) and Special Representative on Political Prisoners Steve Cohen (United States) denounced the verdict and called for Kara-Murza’s release.
“Today’s verdict against Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been sentenced to 25 years in jail for comments he made critical of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and other Kremlin policies, is a travesty of justice,” President Cederfelt said. “The charges against him are completely bogus and fly in the face of the most basic principles of freedom of expression, reminiscent of show trials against Soviet dissidents under Josef Stalin’s dictatorship of the 1930s. I call on Russian authorities to do the right thing and release Mr. Kara-Murza immediately.”
“Mr. Kara-Murza’s sentence is an aberration of justice and indictment of the Kremlin‘s dictatorial policies. Mr. Kara-Murza is a Russian patriot who has committed no crime other than speaking out against Russia’s war against Ukraine and denouncing Putin’s policies at home,” Representative Cohen said. “The Russian state has denied Mr. Kara-Murza a fair trial and kept him in conditions endangering his health. The two previous attempts on his life make any health issues life-threatening for Mr. Kara-Murza. He is innocent of the crimes he is accused of. If the Russian government has a shred of decency left in it, it must let Vladimir come home now.”
In the OSCE PA’s Birmingham Declaration, adopted 6 July 2022, the Assembly “demand[ed] the immediate release of all those in the Russian Federation and Belarus who are persecuted by the regimes in Moscow and in Minsk for protesting against the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine, perpetrated with the complicit participation of Belarus, including prominent Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza.”
The Assembly hosted a side event at the Birmingham Annual Session that featured remarks from Evgenia Kara-Murza, Vladimir Kara-Murza's wife. Vladimir Kara-Murza has participated in previous OSCE PA meetings and has testified at the U.S. Helsinki Commission. The Assembly has issued statements on the Kara-Murza case in April 2022 and in February 2023.
