Press Release, 9.03.2021

Four deputies of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma signed an appeal to Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, with a request to open a criminal case on the fact of media reports about the possible poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. by officers of the Federal Security Service in 2015 and 2017. This information was published in a number of media in January.

According to the current legislation, facts of such public importance published in the media must be investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee. According to Maxim Kruglov, Yevgeny Bunimovich, Daria Besedina and Sergei Mitrokhin, as well as Mikhail Timonov, a deputy from A Just Russia faction who joined Yabloko in signing the appeal, if the information indicated in the media reports is correct, then it falls under the corpus delicti under Article 277 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Encroachment on the life of a public or statesman ”. Taking into account the effect of the moratorium on the death penalty, at the moment the maximum sanction under the article envisages life imprisonment.

“The practices of any violent influence on opposition statesmen and public figures is criminal,” the appeal runs. “Any attempts to silence opponents of the current state power, deprive them of the opportunity to participate in public life, make political activity punishable and, moreover, deadly for citizens, are categorically unacceptable.”

The deputies of the Moscow city parliament also stressed that, according to the Criminal Procedure Code, the investigation of crimes in criminal cases against officials of the federal security service in connection with the performance of their official duties falls precisely within the competence of the Investigative Committee.

According to the results of the investigation carried out by independent media, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., who has been a longtime associate of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov who was killed in 2015 and has been actively perpetuating his memory since then, could have become a victim of the same FSB officers who were involved in the possible poisoning of Alexei Navalny. It should be noted that earlier the Yabloko Federal Political Committee adopted a decision to seek an investigation of political assassinations and assassination attempts.