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Putin to timely consider request to sack police generals over Golunov case — spokesman

Earlier Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev asked the Russian president to sack Major-General Andrey Puchkov and Major-General Yury Devyatkin over their involvement in the Golunov case

Russian President Vladimir Putin Dmitry Feoktistov/TASS Host Photo Agency

Russian President Vladimir Putin

© Dmitry Feoktistov/TASS Host Photo Agency

MOSCOW, June 11./TASS/. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to specify the time frame for President Vladimir Putin’s consideration of the request from Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to dismiss two police generals over the case of reporter Ivan Golunov.

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Journalist Golunov says he will continue investigative activity

"The petition will be looked into in a timely fashion," Peskov said in reply to the question about the possible dates for the decision on that issue.

Earlier, Kolokolstsev said he would ask the Russian president to sack Major-General Andrey Puchkov, the chief of Moscow’s Western Administrative District police force, which opened a criminal case against the investigative reporter of the Internet resource Meduza, as well as chief of the Drug Control Directorate of the Moscow police force, Major-General Yury Devyatkin.

He announced this after declaring that the decision had been made to drop the charges against the journalist as his participation in the crime had not been proven.

Golunov case

Earlier on Tuesday, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said that the criminal case against journalist Ivan Golunov on suspicion of drug trafficking had been dismissed "in view of the failure to prove his participation in the crime."

All charges were dropped, and he was released from house arrest on June 11. The materials of the internal probe were referred from the Internal Ministry’s security division to the Investigative Committee to review the legitimacy of the actions by the police officers, who had apprehended Golunov. The officers have been suspended.

Ivan Golunov was taken into custody on June 6. According to the Interior Ministry’s main Moscow office, Golunov was carrying four grams of mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant drug, while five grams of cocaine were found during a search of his rented apartment. Subsequently, he was charged with drug dealing, whereupon Moscow’s Nikulinsky District Court placed the journalist under house arrest. Golunov denied all the accusations from the beginning, and his defense attorney believed that the prohibited substances had been planted.

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Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov

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