MOSCOW, November 11 (RAPSI, Maria Petrova) - In its consideration of the complaints lodged by seven persons involved in 2012 Moscow riots case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has sent a number of questions to Russia, attorney Dmitry Agranovsky told RAPSI on Monday.

Earlier, the ECHR gave priority to the appeals filed Vladimir Akimenkov, Yaroslav Belousov, Leonid Kovyazin, Artyom Savyolov, Mikhail Kosenko, Andrei Barabanov and Nikolai Kavkazsky and consolidated them.

According to Agranovsky, Russia must answer the questions by January 17. The ECHR has raised general and individual issues relating to the activists and their detention.
The mass protests took place at a Moscow protest rally on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a third presidential term in May 2012. The rally ended in clashes between protesters and the police.

Over 400 people were arrested and scores were injured when protesters briefly broke through police lines.

The criminal case was initiated after the "Anatomy of Protest 2" documentary film was shown on the NTV broadcasting network. The film claimed that the opposition was organizing a coup using funds from abroad and showed Left Front movement coordinator Udaltsov and his companions allegedly talking with Georgian politician Givi Targamadze, who at the time headed Georgia's Parliamentary Defense and Security Committee, and is said to have been involved in planning the "color" revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as the mass riots in Belarus.