The Tverskoy Court of Moscow invalidated the deal on the transfer of the building from the International Memorial to the Memorial Research and Education Center and, even before the start of the hearings, ordered that the accounts and property of the International Memorial be seized.
The office on Karetny Ryad has been owned by International Memorial since 2005. “There is not a single legal basis for recognizing the deal as invalid: we assess the attempt to seize the premises of Memorial in favor of the state as a raider and political,” human rights activists also noted .
On October 7, Memorial became a Nobel Peace Prize laureate together with the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and Belarusian human rights activist Ales Byalyatsky.
The human rights organization "Memorial" was founded in 1989 to study political repressions in the USSR. Later, the organization split into International Memorial, which continued to document the crimes of the Soviet authorities, and the Memorial human rights center, which also began to document the crimes of the already existing regime.
The Human Rights Center considers it its mission to promote universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms – both in the Russian Federation and in other states. The Human Rights Center was recognized by the Russian authorities as a “foreign agent” in 2014, and the International Memorial in 2016. The lawsuit for the liquidation of the human rights center was filed by the Moscow Prosecutor's Office with the Moscow City Court, and the lawsuit for the liquidation of the "International Memorial" was sent by the Prosecutor General's Office to the Supreme Court of Russia.
It was the human rights activities of the organization that caused its liquidation by the authorities. According to the prosecution, the center "demonstrates a steady disregard for the Constitution of the Russian Federation and laws, violates the rights of citizens and the right to access information." The lists of political prisoners maintained by the organization are “aimed at creating a negative perception of the Russian judicial system,” and Memorial’s “support” of the protests is at “destabilizing” the situation in the country, the Russian prosecutor’s office believes. Also, historians were blamed for "slanderous information about the Soviet authorities."
