Front Line is deeply concerned following reports that the office of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Support Tolerance was raided by police on 20 March 2008. Computers and software were taken as well as the mobile phone of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, a consultant with the Foundation. Stanislav Dmitrievsky had previously been Chairperson of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), a predecessor to the Foundation, before it was closed down in Russia by the authorities.

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Posted 16/04/2008 On 8 April 2008, court officials visited the home of Stanislav Dmitrievsky and threatened to confiscate all of his belongings, along with those of the families of RCFS members, in order to pay the organisation's alleged tax and financial debts. Oksana Chelysheva, journalist and Executive Director of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Support Tolerance, has noted that as a non-profit organisation they are exempt from paying profit tax to the State. The homes of Ilya Shamazov, Yelena Yevdokimova and Yury Staroverov, staff members of the Foundation, were also searched.

Members of the RCFS have been consistently threatened since 2005. In the past Stanislav Dmitrievsky has been threatened with imprisonment and accused of extremism for articles published in the newspaper Pravo Zaschita (Defence of Rights). He was charged with "inciting racial hatred", although he was a peaceful protestor to the policies of the Russian Federation in relation to Chechnya. This conviction was used by the authorities as a pretext to justify the closure of the RCFS in January 2007. Furthermore, he and Oksana Chelysheva have previously received anonymous death threats and the Foundation was prohibited from holding an international conference in October 2007.