Russia Anti-Corruption Activist Violenty Attacked

Albert Pchelintsev, 38, is the head of group which which investigates corruption by officials working in the local government of Khimki.

A Russian anti-corruption activist was attacked by a group of men who shot him in the mouth with a stun gun at the weekend, an opposition coalition said on Monday.

Albert Pchelintsev, 38, is the head of "Against Corruption, Lies and Dishonour", a group which which investigates corruption by officials working in the local government of Khimki, a town just outside Moscow's city limits.

The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups run by Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov, said on its website www.kasparov.ru that Pchelintsev was in hospital in a "moderately serious" condition.

A band of up to five men attacked Pchelintsev as he was leaving a train and shouted: "You won't be able to speak out now for a long time," an environmental organisation for the Moscow region reported on its site www.ecmo.ru, citing witnesses.

The assailants were still at large, it added.

Saturday's attack comes less than two weeks after Chechen human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was killed, triggering worldwide outrage, and several days after the body of activist Andrei Kulagin was found in a sand pit in north-west Russia.

The Other Russia's website said Pchelintsev had been receiving threats "for some time" since he openly spoke out against Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko, and added that rights activists in the region regularly suffer attacks.

Last November Mikhail Beketov, the editor of an investigative newspaper in Khimki, was savagely beaten, resulting in the amputation of his leg and fingers.

Reporting the incident, Russian popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets printed a photograph of Pchelintsev sitting beside a picture of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev, cultivating an image as a liberal, has pledged to increase openness in society and reduce graft and lawlessness, though critics say there have been very few substantial changes so far.