Medvedev to meet members of Council for civil society & human rights

MOSCOW, July 5 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will on
Tuesday meet members of the presidential Council for the development of
civil society and human rights.
The Council's official website reports that civilian participation in
counteraction to terrorism and extremism and the creation of an
inter-ethnic and inter-confessional accord will be among the key topics of
today's dialogue.
According to the Council's head, Mikhail Fedotov, Russian human rights
activists are preparing materials on the cases of Khodorkovsky and
Magnitsky. They are carrying out a public analysis of these cases and will
submit their conclusions to the Russian president.
Fedotov says that the Council's idea to draft and adopt a bill on
public control may be another subject for discussion.
At the moment, the Council's members are studying another bill
proposed by lawmaker Alexander Torshin in which he suggests establishing
the precedence of the Russian Constitutional Court's decisions over the
rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, which receives a lot of
complaints from Russia.
The meeting of the Council's members with the president is timed to
coincide with the beginning of a trial over defendants accused of killing
the Spartak football fan Yegor Sviridov in December 2010. This case
provoked mass riots and disturbances on Moscow's Manezhnaya Square that
were classified as actions inciting inter-ethnic strife. The Council's
members are unlikely to ignore this fact.
The presidential Council for the development of civil society and
human rights is an advisory body. It was set up to help the president to
exercise his constitutional powers in the provision of human rights and
civil liberties, to inform the head of state about the situation in this
field and prepare proposals of the head of state on issues that are in the
Council's competence.
The Council's history dates back to 1993 when a Commission for human
rights was set up under the Russian president. In 2004, the Commission was
transformed into a Council. Ella Pamfilova headed that body from 2002 to
2010. She resigned from her post on her own accord.
Mikhail Fedotov who was also appointed presidential adviser filled
that position last year.