A court in California has sentenced two Soviet emigrants to death for kidnapping and brutally murdering five people, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday.
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March 14, 2007A Belarusian spy working against the interests of Poland was arrested Saturday in neighboring Lithuania.
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November 27, 2006Russia’s suicide rate is the second worst in the world after Lithuania, the director of a leading Russian social and psychiatric research center said Thursday.
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November 24, 2006The United States and the United Kingdom treated the entrance of Soviet troops into the Baltic states in the 1940s with understanding and viewed this step as an unpleasant but necessary measure to oppose Nazi Germany’s aggression.
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November 23, 2006Russia’s Federal Security Service has detained a high-ranking official of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) who had been cooperating with Lithuanian secret services for a long time, Itar-Tass reported on Tuesday.
The FSB’s public relations center identified the detainee as Lt-Col Vasily Khitryuk of the FSIN’s internal service office in Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave.
The officer allegedly passed state military secrets to the Baltic country’s security services, RIA Novosti adds.
“The suspect used his former colleagues and friends who serve in the Russian army and security-related agencies to obtain confidential informationâ€, the service said in a statement.
“Following orders from a Lithuanian intelligence officer, he [Khitryuk] offered them monetary rewards for supplying him with copies of secret documents,†the statement said.
The FSB said that during Khitryuk’s arrest, officers seized computer storage devices with files containing top-secret information on the combat readiness of the Baltic Fleet and Russia’s military contingent in Kaliningrad.
The service said it had gathered enough evidence to launch a criminal investigation.
The Embassy of Lithuania in Moscow refused to comment on the arrest. “We do not comment on such information,†an embassy official quoted by RIA Novosti said.
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October 27, 2006A former Yukos banker wanted in Russia on embezzlement charges will not be extradited, Lithuania’s Court of Appeal quoted by RIA Novosti ruled Monday.
Lithuania granted provisional asylum last October to Igor Babenko, 55, a former manager of the embattled oil company Yukos’ Menatep St. Petersburg bank affiliate in southern Russia, and last week the country’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld his political asylum.
In Russia Babenko, who was born in Lithuania, is accused of issuing loans worth 119 million rubles ($4.42 million) to two companies in league with their executives, who allegedly pocketed the money. Russian investigators estimated the value of other schemes involving the banker at 214 million rubles (about $8 million).
On October 18, a Lithuanian prosecutor released Babenko from custody on condition he not leave the country.
Babenko has dismissed the charges against him as political. His lawyer said earlier the banker is being prosecuted only because he headed an affiliate of the bank connected with imprisoned Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s inner circle.
But the Trust bank, formerly known as Menatep St. Petersburg, said the case is not politically motivated. Yekaterina Tolkunova, the bank’s marketing director, said earlier the case is “a felony, pure and simple.â€
An in-house probe into the missing loans has revealed that controversial local businessmen were behind the firms that received them, Tolkunova said.
Lithuanian authorities arrested Babenko in July 2005 after a Russian court issued an arrest warrant and put the banker and his associates on an international wanted list.
In September, a Vilnius district court ruled to extradite Babenko to Russia, saying Russian authorities had provided convincing evidence. But an appeals court in the Baltic state put the extradition order on hold pending an asylum ruling.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have searched the country house of a vice president of the bankrupt company, RIA Novosti adds.
“The search of [Mikhail] Shestopalov’s dacha was conducted October 18. Investigators did not find the two pistols he had been presented with while working in the Interior Ministry, but they confiscated other arms,†Boris Kuznetsov said.
He said Shestopalov was not in Russia, and that prosecutors broke into the house, prohibiting the vice president’s wife from entering.
Kuznetsov added that he has filed a complaint against investigators and has proposed handing over the pistols they failed to find, but the Prosecutor’s General Office refused to accept them.
He said the search was illegal and suggested that it was related to the case of Leonid Nevzlin, Yukos core shareholder, who is currently living in Israel and is on the international wanted list.
Nevzlin has been charged with fraud and involvement in a number of contract killings, and was put on the international wanted list July 21, 2004.
Israel has refused to extradite him to Russia.
The Prosecutor’s General Office has offered no comment on the search so far.
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October 24, 2006
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