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Journalist Golunov says wants to return to his ‘old life’

"I don’t want people to recognize me," he said

MOSCOW, June 14. /TASS/. Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov, who was detained on drug-related charges and then released, said on Friday he wanted to return to his "old life," in which he took the subway and wrote articles.

"I’ll try to be careful, but I want to return to my old life, to take the subway, to write my articles," he said during the "Ostorozhno, Sobchak" online show, broadcast via YouTube. "I don’t want people to recognize me."

The journalist added that now he cannot stay aside from cases of illegal prosecution under article 228 of the Russian Criminal Code (production, sales, or transportation of illicit drugs).

"I feel that I at least should take up this subject. It will take me some time to understand what I can do to be of help. But I’m not a specialist," Golunov said.

Golunov, a reporter of the Meduza online media outlet, walked free on Tuesday after police had dropped criminal charges against him amid claims that he was framed. The journalist was taken into custody on June 6. According to the interior ministry’s main Moscow city department, 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 said he believed that the prohibited substances had been planted.

The journalist’s detention has sparked a public outcry and his colleagues have been holding pickets outside the interior ministry’s building in Moscow demanding his release.

On Tuesday, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev announced that criminal charges against Golunov had been dropped over the failure to prove his involvement in the crime. A number of top-ranking police officers were fired by a presidential decree on Thursday.