Shame on you

Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika criticized the work of investigators in the North Caucasus. First of all, for the vicious practice of attributing unsolved and especially serious criminal offenses to killed militants. “Last year, during inspections carried out by a team of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the prosecutor’s offices of the republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria revealed a lot of violations of the criminal procedural law, including blatant cases when unsolved serious and especially serious crimes were attributed to the murdered militants and then criminal cases against them were illegally terminated,” Chaika said at an operational meeting dedicated to the results of the work of the prosecutor’s office in the North Caucasus Federal District. If there really is a suspicion that such and such a killed militant is involved in such and such a crime, then “we must have full confidence that these militants are really involved in committing terrorist crimes and that truly legal decisions have been made in the cases,” Chaika said. And in general, according to the Prosecutor General, although many leaders of the gangster underground were killed, the number of serious crimes is growing, and the investigation is not working hard enough. In general, the prosecutor’s office in the North Caucasus Federal District must “ensure effective supervision over the detection and investigation of crimes,” otherwise “practice shows that as soon as supervision weakens, the low quality of the preliminary investigation, unsecured evidence, and numerous violations of rights immediately begin to emerge.” participants in criminal proceedings."

The practice of attributing a crime to a murdered person was discussed quite recently in the context of the investigation into the murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova: a year later, the investigation settled on a single version, according to which the criminal was Alkhazur Bashaev, who was subsequently killed. (It should be added that the motive, according to the investigation, that Bashaev had, is exaggerated: Estemirova did not investigate the crime in which Bashaev was involved and for the investigation of which he allegedly decided to take revenge on her; in addition, investigators suggest believing that not far from the place murder of Estemirova, Bashaev hid a pistol and a fake police ID with his own photograph pasted into a cache.)