An employee of the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters is being held in a pre-trial detention center for about a month
Yaroslavl scientist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained on February 16 on suspicion of committing a series of serious crimes in the summer of 2002. His colleagues and friends unanimously declare that he could not have committed them.
Photo: Marina Tsvetkova < span itemprop="height" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/QuantitativeValue">
The village of Borok in the Yaroslavl region, where the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters is located, has been in a fever since the shocking news of the detention of researcher Alexander Tsvetkov came. Alexander, together with his colleagues, was returning from another expedition to Siberia, where they carried out scientific research. Alexander was the head of the expedition. The Krasnoyarsk-Moscow plane landed at Domodedovo Airport, the passengers were already climbing for outerwear and hand luggage, when suddenly an announcement sounded: “Everyone, stay in your seats!”. People in police uniforms entered the cabin of the plane, handcuffed Alexander and took him away in an unknown direction. He was so shocked that he didn't even have time to say anything.
Later it turned out that he was taken to pre-trial detention center No. 7 in Kapotnya in connection with the charge that he was a member of a criminal group that committed brutal murders in Moscow and the Moscow region 20 years ago. Alexander's colleagues presented an indisputable alibi to the investigation: at the time when the crimes incriminated to him were committed, he was on an expedition in the Yaroslavl region or at his workplace at the institute and could not leave it unnoticed. Documents have been preserved confirming his presence at work full-time, he did not have any vacations or days off during this period.
“Our institute has always had a strict working schedule,” says Alexander Krylov, director of the institute. “It’s impossible to just leave without formalizing it in any way. These accusations look especially absurd, given that it is about 400 kilometers from Bork to the crime scene, and it takes more than five hours to get there by car. In addition, they were committed on different days, and Alexander would have had to wander back and forth many times. At the same time, Alexander did not have a car at that time: the rights appeared only in 2012, and he bought his first car in 2013. Getting from Bork by public transport is still not easy, and 20 years ago it was a real quest.” Tsvetkov's colleagues handed over all these documents to the investigation, but for some reason no one is in a hurry to check the alibi.
How did suspicion fall on Tsvetkov? According to Marina Tsvetkova, his wife and also an employee of the institute, Alexander's face matched 55 percent of the biometric data of the potential killer in the search program embedded in the airport's video cameras, even when he flew on the expedition. After that, law enforcement officers asked for photographs at the Rybinsk police department, showed them to witnesses and Alexander's alleged partner. He was identified, although, according to Marina, he has changed a lot over these 20 years, and witnesses saw the criminal for only a few seconds. As for the partner, he could have his own interest in this identification. According to relatives, the man faces a life sentence, so he entered into a pre-trial agreement and «identifies anyone.» “For some reason, no one is embarrassed by the fact that he describes his accomplice as a rude, cruel person who smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day? Sasha never smoked and, as his friends say about him, he won’t hurt a fly, ”says his wife.
One way or another, according to friends and colleagues of Tsvetkov, he had neither the physical ability nor the motive to participate in these murders. Alexander has been passionate about biology since childhood — the science of living things. He was born and raised in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region, at school he came to the station of young naturalists, where Alexander Krylov, the future director of the institute, became his teacher. Then Sasha graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Yaroslavl University, settled in Borok and since then has been working at the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters. He loves his work endlessly, devotes all his free time to it. A wonderful scientist and an excellent organizer — this is how his director characterizes.
At a conference of young scientists in Bork 20 years ago, he met his future wife, who came there from Tver. “We almost immediately developed mutual sympathy, we began to correspond, meet, met our parents, and then decided to get married,” recalls Marina. – Sasha is a very good person, caring and sympathetic, I moved to him in Borok without hesitation and have never regretted it. We have three children, we were just waiting for dad from the expedition that day, but we didn’t wait … The children, especially the youngest, are very worried about him.
Alexander and all his colleagues are worried. Staying in a pre-trial detention center can undermine his health, and he already has a weak heart. The wife is not allowed not only to meet — they are not even given the opportunity to give him outerwear for walking. There was only one call from Alexander — on the day he was detained, but after more than eight hours. He called and within 20 seconds said: “Don’t worry, I was detained as a witness, this is some kind of mistake, they will sort it out soon and let me go.”
However, about a month has passed since then…
The public has already collected about a hundred signatures under a letter in defense of Alexander Tsvetkov and sent it to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov, Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova and Governor of the Yaroslavl Region Mikhail Evraev. Under the letter to the President of the country Vladimir Putin, the collection of signatures continues.