MOSCOW, June 14 (Itar-Tass) — Chairman of the Russian Investigation Committee (SK) Alexander Bastrykin denied some media reports that he had allegedly taken a Novaya Gazeta reporter Sergei Sokolov to the forest. Bastrykin has made a statement in an interview with the Izvestia daily on Thursday.
“No one took away anyone. This is just nonsense. We had a very emotional conversation with high tensions,” the newspaper quoted Bastrykin as saying.
“I agree that this is inadmissible for me to show emotions. I had to keep patient, but to try to explain to an indecent journalist to tell the good from evil. I have nothing to apologize for to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. The only thing that I would like to say and I am sure of this that most journalists are highly decent and honest people, who do their work in heavy conditions, as well as officers of the Investigation Committee do,” Bastrykin noted.
“The conflicting situation with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper emerged after an impudent and awful article of journalist Sokolov about the SK investigation into the criminal case against Tsapok’s gang, members of which are accused of massacre in the settlement Kushchevskaya.” “I will put it straightforwardly that my reaction about the article was emotional. I was just feeling a pity for detectives rather than for myself, as the detectives are doing their work frequently putting their lives at risk. It was my initiative to invite Sokolov and show to him those concrete detectives, who were investigating the notorious criminal case against the villains from Kushchevskaya,” Bastrykin said.
Meanwhile, he could not imagine that “the journalists and the editorial office of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper will get down to a blatant lie.”
He noted that “there is only a letter from the Novaya Gazeta chief editor, who mixed very intricately the facts and obvious lies.”
Speaking on a conversation with the journalist at a meeting in Nalchik Bastrykin stated that he does not refuse from his words. “I really gave a tough response to a perverted attempt of the journalist to give apologies. He said, “Well, I apologize but I will prove that you are a thief and sold yourself to Tsapok.” How could I react to this? I have done this in a so harsh way and in the presence of journalists, who I invited myself. But I still believe that the Novaya Gazeta newspaper acted in the awful way, accusing the Investigation Committee of corruptibility to Tsapok’s killers,” the Izvestia daily quoted him as saying.