Alexander Bastrykin | |
|---|---|
Александр Бастрыкин | |
.jpg) Bastrykin in 2019 | |
| Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia | |
| Assumed office 15 January 2011 | |
| President | Dmitry Medvedev Vladimir Putin |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| First DeputyProsecutor General of Russia | |
| In office 7 September 2007 – 14 January 2011 | |
| Prosecutor General | Yury Chaika |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1953-08-27)27 August 1953 (age 72) Pskov, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Alma mater | Leningrad State University |
| Nickname | Velikan |
| Military service | |
| Rank |  General of justice of the Russian Federation |
Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin (Russian:Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Бастры́кин, born August 27, 1953) is a Russian lawyer and official who has served as the Chairman of theInvestigative Committee of Russia since 15 January 2011. He served as the First DeputyProsecutor General of Russia and Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office from 2007 to 2011.
He holds the special rank of General of Justice, the academic rank ofProfessor, and adoctoral degree in law.
Alexander Bastrykin graduated from theLaw Faculty ofLeningrad State University in 1975, and was a university classmate ofVladimir Putin.[1][2][3]
In 2007, President Vladimir Putin established the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office,de facto independent from the Prosecutor General's Office, and Bastrykin became its first chairman. The appointment was reportedly instigated byIgor Sechin, wishing to retain his influence after the dismissal of his close allyVladimir Ustinov from the position of prosecutor general in 2006.[1][2][3]
On November 28, 2009, as head of the Investigative Committee at the scene of the2009 Nevsky Express bombing, Bastrykin was injured by a second bomb and was hospitalised.[4][5] The second bomb was reportedly targeted at investigators, and was detonated bymobile phone.[5]
Bastrykin is considered to be an intimate advisor of PresidentPutin.[6]
In July 2022, amid the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he announced that the Investigative Committee had opened 1300 criminal investigations against Ukrainian prisoners of war, saying that 92 of them had already been charged with crimes against humanity. The announcement drew criticism from human rights experts, withAmnesty International saying that the Russian government "shared no evidence to support these charges" and that "willfully depriving a prisoner of war of fair trial rights constitutes a war crime."[7]
Bastrykin holds adoctor of law degree, and has published more than 100 scholarly works in Russia.
In 2007 Bastrykin was publicly accused ofplagiarism, because parts of his then new book "Signs of the Hand. Dactyloscopy" (2004) had been rewritten from the famous book of German writerJürgen Thorwald.[8]
In 2013 these accusations were confirmed and supplemented byDissernet community and its founderSergey Parkhomenko: it was found that Bastrykin's book also contains an entire chapter from the book byAnthony Summers "The Secret Life ofJ. Edgar Hoover" (in Russian translation "The FBI Empire – Myths, Secrets, Intrigues").[9][10]
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On January 9, 2017, under theMagnitsky Act, theUnited States Treasury'sOffice of Foreign Assets Control updated itsSpecially Designated Nationals List and blacklisted Aleksandr I. Bastrykin,Andrei K. Lugovoi,Dmitri V. Kovtun, Stanislav Gordievsky, and Gennady Plaksin, whichfroze any of their assets held by American financial institutions or transactions with those institutions and banned their travelling to the United States.[11][12][13]
On 6 July 2020, the government of theUnited Kingdom imposedsanctions on Bastrykin as part of a move to sanction a number of Russians and Saudis for having 'blood on their hands'.[14][15]
On 26 July 2012 Russian blogger and anticorruption activistAlexei Navalny published documents indicating that Bastrykin had a residence permit and owned real estate in the Czech Republic. Mr. Navalny wrote that the real estate holding and residence permit in a country belonging toNATO, a military alliance opposed toRussia, should raise questions about Mr. Bastrykin's security clearance for work in law enforcement and access tostate secrets.[16]
According toDmitry Muratov, Bastrykin threatened the life of newspaper editor Sergei Sokolov, and jokingly assured him that he would investigate the murder himself.[17][18]
In March 2022, Russian journalistAlexander Nevzorov wrote to Bastrykin that Russia's2022 war censorship laws, which introducedprison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, violate thefreedom of speech provisions of the Constitution of Russia.[19]
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In 2015, Bastrykin proposed to amend article 15 of theConstitution of Russia by establishing the priority of national laws over universally recognized principles and norms of international law and international agreements ratified byRussian Federation (it is possible only through the adoption of the new Constitution because article 15 appears in chapter 1, established the fundamental principles of the constitutional order).[20]
In 2016, Bastrykin expressed the need to establish official nationalideology andcensor theInternet, on the grounds that there isinformation warfare againstRussia launched byUSA and its allies.[21][22] As such proposals clash with the provisions of chapters 1 and 2 of theConstitution of Russia, established the fundamental principles of the constitutional order and the fundamental rights of citizens, the complaint was lodged against Bastrykin with theGeneral Prosecutor's Office of Russian Federation[23][24] but General Prosecutor's Office refused to initiate an investigation.[25][26]
Media related toAlexander Bastrykin at Wikimedia Commons
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