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Five crime suspects, including a policewoman, detained in Moscow

Police detained five Muscovites, suspected of abduction, deprivation of freedom through violence and use of weapons, as well as of extortion

MOSCOW, January 17 (Itar-Tass) - Five people, including a policewoman, have been detained in Moscow on suspicion of being members of a criminal gang linked to abduction and extortion, the press service of the Russian Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass on Thursday.

"Police detained five Muscovites, suspected of abduction, deprivation of freedom through violence and use of weapons, as well as of extortion. One of the detainees turned out to be a policewoman in the rank of a captain. She was an authorized operations officer at one of the subdivisions of the Moscow city Department of the Interior,” the Interior Ministry source went on to say.

The Ministry did not specify what charges had been presented to the group of detained persons. They only noted that the arrest of a commercial firm director suspected of sexual abuse had helped the police to pick up the right trail.

"During a raid on the businessman’s apartment policemen found a video on which an unknown old man and a young girl are being brutalized,” the Interior Ministry said. The source also added that the suspects had illegally used riot police uniforms and weapons.

In connection with the aforesaid incident, the head of the Moscow Interior Department has sacked the chief of the personal security division of the Interior Department of Moscow’s Eastern Administrative District: he had given his consent to reclassify the detained woman officer.

The head of the police department of the Moscow Perovo district received a “service incompetence note”, while the head of the criminal investigations unit of the Perovo district was reprimanded.

The policewoman suspected of committing a crime has also been dismissed from law enforcement bodies.