Founder of Russia's top rights group dies

Arseny Roginsky, a prominent Soviet-era dissident who was a key founder of Russia's most prominent rights group Memorial, has died aged 71, the organisation said Monday. Registered in 1992, Memorial is one of Russia's most respected human rights organisations and investigates everything from the Stalin-era Gulag to government death squads in Chechnya.
Roginsky, a former Soviet-era prisoner, died in an Israeli clinic following a "serious illness," a Memorial spokeswoman, Natalia Petrova, told AFP. Memorial said in a statement it could not imagine itself without Roginsky, who was the organisation's chairman.
"Many years before Memorial was founded, he started the fight for historical truth and for human rights - and was denied freedom for that," the organisation said. "He continued this fight until his last day - without him the work of Memorial all these years would have been impossible," it said.