France arrests four suspected of plot against Russia dissident

Four men aged 26 to 38 had been arrested on Monday, the PNAT said.

France has arrested four people in a probe into a suspected plot against a Russian dissident, anti-terror prosecutors said Thursday.

Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian refugee living in France who leads the Gulagu.net non-governmental organisation that specialises in uncovering abuses in Russian prisons, told AFP he had been the target.

Le Parisien newspaper reported earlier that Osechkin had been the target of an assassination plot.

The national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT) did not mention him by name but said it had "opened an investigation on the charge of taking part in a terrorist association with a view to preparing one or more crimes against persons".

Four men aged 26 to 38 had been arrested on Monday, the PNAT said.

Le Parisien said they were French nationals or from Dagestan in Russia's northern Caucasus region.

The PNAT added it had opened an initial probe into the alleged plot on September 19 and asked French domestic intelligence to look into it.

Osechkin is based in France's southwestern resort town of Biarritz.

He confirmed to AFP that the arrests had come after a plot against him.

"All is well," he said, thanking French counter-terrorism services.

"It's obvious that if there had not been such a highly professional and competent security service, (President Vladimir) Putin's assassins would have killed me long ago,” he said.

French prosecutors in September 2022 opened a probe into alleged death threats against Osechkin but found "no objective element" to back his claim that someone was trying to kill him.

Osechkin told AFP at the time he had been at home with his wife and children and working in the dark when he noticed "a moving red dot on the railing of one of the terraces and then moving towards me on the wall".

He said he had been informed in February that year of an assassination plot against him and was subsequently put under police protection.

Gulagu.net rose to prominence in 2021 after publishing videos showing rapes in Russian prisons, as well as testimonies from victims and, extremely unusually, from the perpetrators, leading to the opening of an investigation by the authorities.

It claims to have more than 1,000 videos showing torture in Russian jails.