Starovoitova Murder Organizers May Be Found in Resumed Inquiry - Yabloko
ST. PETERSBURG. Sept 7 (Interfax) - The reopened investigation of the Galina Starovoitova murder gives hopes for finding the crime organizers, member of the Yabloko Party Political Committee Mikhail Amosov told Interfax on Monday.
"We would like to hope for the best, for the political will to find not only the perpetrators but also the organizers," he said.
In the opinion of Amosov, there is a direct relationship between the reopened investigation and the arrest of former State Duma deputy Mikhail Glushchenko early in the summer. Glushchenko had been questioned as
a witness to the Starovoitova case. "I think the link is obvious," he said.
He emphasized efforts taken by Starovoitova's aide Ruslan Linkov and sister Olga, who kept trying to resume the investigation and to find the organizers.
Yabloko Bureau member Boris Vishnevsky also hopes the organizers will be found.
"The earlier investigation was incomplete. The organizers were never found. Hopefully, that will be done now," he told Interfax on Monday.
"I do not rule out that the Glushchenko interrogation might have shed light on certain circumstances vital for the resumption of the investigation," he said.
The Federal Security Service "resumed the investigation due to new circumstances," a service representative told Interfax. He did not go into details.
The St. Petersburg department of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office Investigation Committee seized Glushchenko during the course of the investigation into the murder of three Russians - Yuri Zorin, Viktoria Tretyakova and former State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Shevchenko - on Cyprus in March 2004. The St. Petersburg Kuibyshev District Court authorized the arrest of Glushchenko. The latter was charged with extortion and organization of the murder of three Russians on Cyprus. Earlier media reports linked him to the Starovoitova case.
Starovoitova, State Duma deputy and cochair of the Democratic Russia party, was shot at her house on November 20, 1998. Her aide, Linkov, was injured. The investigation was suspended in April 2008.
