Moscow Helsinki Group concerned by searches at campaigner Peredruk's parents' home in "Arkhangelsk terrorist" case
MURMANSK. April 3 (Interfax) - The Moscow Helsinki Group board has expressed concern with searches carried out at the Murmansk apartment of the parents of the human rights campaigner Alexander Peredruk last Tuesday.
"There are valid reasons for this concern," given the inquiries into Novoye Velichiye (New Greatness) and Set (Network), the group said on its website, while expressing hope that "this search would remain an isolated investigative instance, a misunderstanding as a consequence of the poor competence of some security officers and not part of targeted snooping on Alexander Peredruk."
"Alexander Peredruk has not lived in Murmansk for a long time now, he has been involved in human rights campaigning for many years and is not in the slightest involved with any terrorist organization whatsoever or lone terrorists (...) We believe that apologies should be made Alexander's parents," the MHG board said.
Earlier Peredruk told Interfax about searches carried out at the Murmansk apartment of his relatives, where he was registered until March 2018, in connection with the case against the "Arkhangelsk terrorist" Mikhail Zhlobitsky. A personal computer and a memory stick were seized.
"According to what is written in the search report, their [investigators'] task is to collect information in the criminal case opened following the terror attack on the FSB building in Arkhangelsk and to find that there was an exchange of messages with Zhlobitsky. But I didn't personally know him by any means [...] and all I know about this criminal case I know from public sources," Peredruk said.
On October 31, 2018, 17-year-old Mikhail Zhlobitsky blew up a home-made bomb inside the building of the FSB Arkhangelsk department. The blast killed the attacker, an Arkhangelsk Polytechnic College student, on the scene. Three employees of the regional FSB branch were injured.