Moscow, 8 April: Around 30 activists from the human rights organizations of several Russian cities are holding a rally on Tuesday (8 April) on Slavyanskaya Ploshchad (square) in the centre of Moscow, in protest at the current state of affairs in the Russian judicial system.

Participants in the rally are protesting against instances of "illegal prosecution" and "politically motivated sentences". They are also speaking out in support of Mikhail Khodorkovskiy and Platon Lebedev, the convicted heads of Yukos, and Aleksey Pichugin, head of the company's security service.

"Civil and political activists are being persecuted in our country. In many legal cases, including the Yukos case, verdicts are motivated by the political situation," Lev Ponomarev, leader of the For Human Rights movement, said at the rally.

For his part, Aleksey Sokolov, one of the rally organizers and head of the Yekaterinburg public organization Rights and Basics, criticized the situation in Sverdlovsk Region's judicial system, and reported instances of "forged criminal cases".

"We have come to the conclusion that only the president will help us defeat the arbitrariness of officials in robes," he said.

Sokolov said that the rally had been authorized by the Moscow authorities.