Russia searches hundreds of rights groupsMOSCOW - Russian prosecutors on Thursday searched the offices of Memorial, one of the country's oldest and most respected human rights groups, part of a new wide-ranging campaign targeting hundreds of nongovernmental organizations.Up to 2,000 organizations have already been searched, Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council, told The Associated Press, saying the scale of the government campaign was unprecedented."It goes full circle across the whole spectrum," Chikov said. "They're trying to find as many violations as possible."He said the prosecutor general's office ordered every region in Russia last month to check all religious, political and social NGOs for violations of Russia's vaguely worded "extremism" law.
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