is not considered a crime if it is committed by the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. Remember, I wrote that I had filed a crime report regarding the fact that Bastrykin—the holder of a Czech residence permit, owner of property in the Czech Republic and Spain, and at the same time the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee—threatened to kill a journalist from Novaya Gazeta. Well, the reply has arrived. It was signed by that same Shchukin, whose job at the Investigative Committee is to sign the things others do not want to sign (it was he who signed the order to open a case against me; he represented the Investigative Committee in the State Duma when Gudkov was stripped of his parliamentary mandate; etc.):
Such nonsense that there is nothing even to investigate. There is not the slightest sign of a crime. All they did was take a man into the woods and tell him this (I quote): "They’ll cut your head off, and your legs will be somewhere else. No one will ever find you, and if they do, I’ll be the one investigating it." Does that sound like a death threat? Of course not. Who could possibly take "they’ll cut your head off, and your legs will be somewhere else" as a threat? It is just ridiculous. Ha ha ha. Especially since the threat came merely from a man who had previously, while drunk, threatened a passerby with his service pistol, telling him, "Get out of here or I’ll shoot both you and your dog". So the man likes to drink, likes to make threats, used to like waving a pistol around. What now, put him on trial for that? It is jittery journalists who call this a crime. But the Investigative Committee knows for certain that its chief committed nothing even remotely resembling a crime, and therefore refuses to consider any reports about him under Article 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (the procedure for reviewing crime reports).
Well then, off to the Basmanny District Court with this. I am actually curious now what they will come up with to let Bastrykin off the hook.