Topless protesters Femen leave ‘bugged’ Kiev offices after raid (VIDEO)
Femen leader Anna Hutsol leaves her Kiev office after a police search on Aug. 27, 2013. Police said they found a gun, grenade, portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill. Hutsol said it was a provocation organized by the security services against the organization.
Topless protesters from the group Femen have left their offices in Kiev after accusing authorities there of wiretapping the building.
The decision comes two days after a police raid there found a gun, grenade and pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill, a Russian Orthodox Church leader, with crosshairs drawn over their faces.
The group called the raid an orchestrated attempt by police to frame them for crimes they didn’t commit, Agence France-Presse reported.
“It is impossible to work there now: everything is being listened to,” Femen organizer Anna Hutsol told AFP.
Hutsol said the group had planned to move before the raid, so that’s why police moved in when they did.
On its Facebook page, Femen blamed security forces for planting the weapons.
“Femen accuses Russian and Ukrainian secret services (of) conspiring and committing criminal action,” the group said online. “Crime committed by Ukrainian special services and law enforcement agencies shows the marginal nature of the Ukrainian political situation.”
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Police said they received “an anonymous bomb warning,” which forced them to investigate, a Femen statement said.
Charges had yet to be laid, but Femen said police “immediately opened a criminal case … of ‘illegal possession of weapons,’ punishable by two to five years imprisonment.”
Femen said its activists working in the Ukrainian capital were taken to a police station where they were given written explanations and released pending a decision on custody.
“Half an hour ago policemen came and told us that there had been a complaint about weapons and explosives being stored in our office. We of course did not take it seriously, but the fact that seconds later the whole special group appeared shows that everything has been planned in advance,” Hutsol told EuroNews.
She later told reporters by text message that she expected police to charge members, the Guardian reported.
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