The Swedes returned the killer to Russia
Today Sweden will extradite to Russia Latvian citizen Alexander Petrov, accused of murder. To achieve his extradition, the Prosecutor General's Office had to promise that the criminal would not be executed.

Last spring, Petrov came to Moscow from Daugavpils and stayed with his distant relative. On April 13, a quarrel arose between relatives, during which Petrov inflicted numerous wounds on a 73-year-old woman with a kitchen knife, from which she died on the spot, and disappeared. According to one version, the cause of the conflict was Petrov’s intention to get the apartment of an elderly Muscovite. The body of the murdered woman was discovered only two days later - neighbors, concerned that the elderly woman was not answering the doorbell, called the police.
The operatives quickly established the name of the killer. They could not detain him, since immediately after the murder Petrov left for Latvia, and on June 8 he was put on the federal and international wanted list. As it turned out, Petrov was hiding in Daugavpils for several months, constantly changing apartments. Latvian police were on the trail of the killer several times, but were unable to detain him. Meanwhile, Petrov decided to move abroad.
On September 4, he boarded the Mikhail Sholokhov ferry, traveling from Riga to Stockholm. As soon as the ferry entered the Baltic Sea, Latvian police reported its passenger to their Russian and Swedish colleagues. In Stockholm, Petrov was immediately arrested.
For four months, negotiations on the extradition of Petrov took place between Russia and Sweden. Since the death penalty has not been abolished in Russia, the Swedish Ministry of Justice demanded written guarantees from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office that Petrov would not be executed (according to Swedish law, the non-application of the death penalty is a prerequisite for the extradition of a criminal). Having received confirmation from the Russian side, the Swedes agreed to extradite Petrov. This afternoon, on an Aeroflot flight, the criminal will be transported to Sheremetyevo-2 and handed over to Russian law enforcement agencies.
This is not the first case of cooperation between Russian and Swedish law enforcement agencies. For example, in 1998, Sweden extradited to Russia entrepreneur Vadim Razumovsky, a member of a group that stole $9 million allocated from the budget for the development of the healthcare system in the Murmansk region. The fraudster was jailed for nine years.

OLEG KUTASOV

Newspaper “Kommersant” No. 19/P dated 02/05/2001, page 9