Russian anti-drugs crusader under growing pressure

MOSCOW (AP) Russia's most outspoken and charismatic anti-drugs campaigner accused authorities on Tuesday of trying to close his rehabilitation center by falsely claiming it has abused patients.

For more than a decade, businessman and art historian Yevgeny Roizman has been waging a crusade against drug pushers and corrupt police in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg amid a drug epidemic that has made Russia the world's largest heroin consumer.

The center Roizman founded and partly funds is seen by many Russians as a model of community-driven rehab efforts, and his followers have helped police identify and arrest dozens of drug dealers.

But Yekaterinburg officials have accused Roizman's team of isolating patients without their consent and using violence and forced labor as part of therapy.

On Tuesday, a court in the town of Berezovsk near Yekaterinburg charged Roizman's deputy, Yevgeny Malenkin, with illegally imprisoning patients and issued an arrest warrant for him.

Malenkin left Yekaterinburg earlier this week after police tried to question him, Roizman said, adding that the charges against him were initiated after police pressured former patients to file complaints.

Roizman has accused police of using this tactic against his center before. He said police pressured former patients to file complaints in 2004, accusing him of illegal imprisonment at the center, but that all of them were dropped by 2007.

Roizman has claimed the campaign against him is part of the regional governor's attempt to boost his own anti-drugs credentials and to challenge the center's success and Roizman's allegations of corruption among local police.

Roizman has alleged that investigators sent from Moscow have tried to force their subordinates to secretly extort bribes from local drug pushers in exchange for immunity from persecution.

Dozens of Russian police officers have been convicted and jailed for accepting bribes from drug dealers or selling drugs directly.

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Russian anti-drugs crusader under growing pressure