Protesters Face Jail Sentence After Arvi Demonstration

Local security authorities in Arvi have threatened four protesters with the prospect of jail after they pleaded guilty to causing violent damage in protests held in the city a week ago. The four men, members of radical Sar pressure group ‘Freedom Front’, are expected to face prosecution early next month. But Former Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Sukhorukov urged the government to step in and ‘stop all’ criminal investigations into the four men. The former minister, who resigned after the Prime Minister installed members from third-party the United Nationalist Democrats into his executive, said that the right to protest needed to be ‘protected’ and went on to say that the actions of the four have been ‘constructed’ by security forces. The government said that it ‘respected the right of the Arvian authorities to prosecute those who had acted outside the law.’