Criminal case initiated on marauding in "Nord-Ost"

The Investigatory Committee under the Prosecutor's Office (ICPO) of Russia has initiated a criminal case on the fact of stealing money from the hostages after the terror act at the Dubrovka Theatrical Centre. The advocate of the suffered party Igor Trunov thinks that by doing so at the Prosecutor's Office tries to hamper consideration of civil suits lodged.

The criminal case has been initiated under part 2, Article 158, of the Criminal Code "Theft", which assumes the maximal punishment of 5 years of imprisonment.

Victoria Tsyplenkova, spokesman of the ICPO, explained in her interview to the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" that the case was opened against unknown persons.

"It's obvious that marauding in 'Nord-Ost' was of mass character, but we can't prove it. However, in 15 instances the inquiry registered proofs against itself, having put data about the money found in the hall into the protocol. Then, the money was stolen. It looks bad: the protocol exists, but there's no money," advocate Trunov told the "Kommersant" newspaper.

According to his story, stolen sums are quite essential. Thus, for example, former hostage Ekaterina Dolgaya lost 30 thousand roubles and 2 thousand dollars, casualty Maxim Mikhailov lost 3150 roubles and 254 dollars. Initially, the investigation ignored applications of former hostages and relatives of casualties about marauding. Then, the head of the investigatory group Vladimir Kalchuk tried to lay the blame for the theft on one of the members of the group Captain Denis Lelyukhin, Senior Inspector of the FSB Department for Moscow and Moscow Region, who by that time died in a road accident. However, when the father of the perished inspector stood up in defence of his son's honour and submitted a complaint to FSB bosses, the Prosecutor's Office passed a decision not to initiate a criminal case "for lack of crime attributes."

Advocate Trunov has explained that after that he filed civil suits against the Prosecutor's Office on behalf of five surviving former hostages and family members of ten casualties, since the Office shall respond for actions of its employees. However, now the consideration of these suits will be postponed till the end of this new criminal case.

Besides, yesterday, another claim was filed to Zamoskvoretskiy Court of Moscow in the interests of the relatives of perished Svetlana Apsheva on the fact of marauding. The valuables and the money that were with her had been handed over to inspectors for storage, and then disappeared. The fact was reported by the ITAR-TASS.