ALMATY, August 1. /TASS/. Kazakh authorities will not extradite Russian citizen Nikita Kislitsyn, an employee of the F.A.C.C.T. company, to the US after he was detained in the country in June, Senior Consul at the Russian Consulate General in Almaty Artyom Oganov told TASS.
"In line with a court decision, Kislitsyn is under extradition arrest for 12 months per Russia’s request, there will be no extradition to the US," he said.
Kislitsyn, head of the department that thinks up ways to protect against cyberattacks at F.A.C.C.T., a company previously known as Group-IB, was detained at Almaty Airport on June 22 per an Interpol inquiry initiated by the US. Later, it was revealed that Russian law enforcement was also requesting his extradition. Kislitsyn was put on Russia’s federal wanted list as part of a criminal investigation into unlawful access to computer information protected by law. Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court sanctioned Kislitsyn’s arrest in absentia.
Following this, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General's Office said that it would study the extradition requests by the US and Russia and then the republic’s law enforcement would analyze whether Kislitsyn’s actions constituted a crime in Kazakhstan. A decision on whether or not his extradition was possible would be made later, Kazakh Deputy Prosecutor General Ulan Baizhanov said.
As Oganov told TASS earlier, during his meeting with the detained Russian, Kislitsyn asserted that he "unequivocally intended to return to his homeland" and was not considering any other options, including applying for asylum in Kazakhstan.