Bastrykin denies taking Novaya Gazeta editor to woods
MOSCOW. June 14 (Interfax) - Russian Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin has refuted claims of Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Muratov that he allegedly took newspaper editor Sergei Sokolov to the woods and threatened him.
"First of all, I have not been to a forest for years. I am so busy I cannot travel to the countryside," Bastrykin said in an interview published by the Izvestia website.
"Secondly, the conflict with Novaya Gazeta started after the rude and outrageous article of journalist Sokolov on the committee investigation of the Tsapok gang's case. The gang is accused of the Kushchevskaya massacre. I would not deny that my response to that article was emotional," Bastrykin said.
"I was offended, not so much for myself as for the detectives who risk their lives in doing their job. It was my initiative to invite Sokolov and show him the people who had investigated the high-profile case of the Kushchevskaya scum. The Investigative Committee press service tried to persuade me not to do that. Now I realize that their reasons were founded. But I insisted I wanted to do that. I could not imagine journalists and editors of Novaya Gazeta telling direct lies," he said.
There has been no response from Novaya Gazeta to Bastrykin's statement.
Muratov demanded on June 13 that Bastrykin give security guarantees to journalists due to his altercation with Sokolov.
An open letter published by Novaya Gazeta on Wednesday claimed that Bastrykin had invited his deputy Sokolov to visit the North Caucasus and had an oral argument with Sokolov at an interdepartmental conference.
Upon the return to Moscow, "your guards put Sokolov into a car and took him to a forest in the Moscow suburbs without any explanations," Muratov claimed.
"You told the guards to leave and had a one-on-one conversation with Sokolov. We won't quote your highly emotional comments on the newspaper and its editorial policy and your description of our late observer Politkovskaya," he wrote.
"Speaking with great ardor, you threatened my deputy's life. You even joked that you would supervise the investigation of his case," Muratov said.
He also reported that Sokolov had left Russia for security reasons.