Aide to Starovoitova Fears Trail Gone Cold

By Irina Titova

Staff Writer

Published: April 4, 2008 (Issue # 1362)

The aide to slain State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova fears investigators have given up trying to establish who ordered the shooting as the Federal Security Service confirmed Wednesday that the investigation into the case has been suspended.

“There are no investigative activities in the case at the moment. However, if the necessity for such activity appears, if information on the missing suspects appears, then we’ll resume work,” an FSB representative said, Interfax reported.

Ruslan Linkov, Starovoitova’s former assistant who was injured during the 1998 killing, said on Tuesday that the investigation into Starovoitova’s case was temporarily stopped on March 20 due to the end of the investigation’s time limit, Interfax reported.

Linkov called the move “outrageous.” He said his Democratic Russia organization was intending to contest the decision in court.

“The person who ordered the crime has not yet been ascertained, despite the fact that the name of one former LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) Duma deputy was mentioned in court. That person acted as a mediator in the crime. However, he has not yet been detained and they haven’t even questioned him,” Linkov said.

Linkov said he regretted that the investigative group that was in charge of Starovoitova’s case was wound up a few years ago, and that the FSB was following the case only “optionally.”

Starovoitova, joint leader of Democratic Russia party, was shot dead in the entrance hall of her apartment building on Nov. 20, 1998. Linkov, who was with Starovoitova, was injured in the attack.

Alexander Gutsan, deputy head of the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, said that the halt in the investigation did not mean that the case was closed.

“The essential volume of investigative actions has been completed but work on the criminal case has not stopped,” Gutsan told reporters in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.

Gutsan said the main target of the investigation was to establish “who ordered the murder.”

In June 2005, following an investigation and trial that lasted for nearly seven years, Starovoitova’s killers, Valery Akishin and Yury Kolchin — the hitman and a technical organizer — were convicted and sentenced to 23 1/2 and 20 years in prison respectively. The investigation has since continued but no major breakthrough has been reached.

During the investigation, Linkov has repeatedly suggested that former LDPR Deputy Vyacheslav Shevchenko and his counterpart Mikhail Glushchenko were linked to the assassination but the prosecution has not proved any such connection.

Shevchenko’s body was found wrapped in a plastic bag in a villa in Cyprus in March 2004. The whereabouts of Glushchenko are unknown.