Russian politician arrested in Italy at Russia's request

TURIN - Former Russian senator Dmitry Krivitsky has been arrested by Italian police in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Veneto at the request of Russian law officers, suggesting the increasing collaboration between the Italian and Russian governments.

 Former Senator of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Krivitsky, has been under investigation for corruption in Russia after being expelled from his seat in government in 2016 and was arrested in absentia for two months in March 2017 on charges of taking a 15-million-ruble bribe. He has been on the international wanted list ever since.

 On July 23 of this year, the Italian police force arrested him in Cortina D’Ampezzo, and he will appear on July 26 at the attorney general in Venice for a hearing for his extradition to Russia, assisted by lawyer Mauro Anetrini.

 The Turin lawyer, who will defend the former Russian senator alongside his colleagues Anna Paola Klinger and Giambattista Zatti, has said that "Dmitry Krivitsky was regularly on Italian soil, where he believed to be safe from the political persecution which he has suffered ever since he voted as a member of Parliament against military operations in Ukraine, considering them illegitimate and totally unjustified.”

 Dismissed from his position and facing restrictive measures, Krivitsky went initially to France where he had applied for political asylum, which will be decided in early November. The lawyers denounce "the seriousness of the episode, certainly not the first place in being by the Russian authorities, which is a victim of political dissidents, persecuted for allowing themselves to oppose a government capable of conditioning the judiciary and its decisions.”

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