Suspected Of Yushenkov's Assassination Artyom Stefanov Freed

By the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, Artyom Stefanov, who is suspected of killing parliamentarian Sergei Yushenkov, was freed on Thursday under a written undertaking not to leave Moscow, a RIA Novosti correspondent was told in the information and public relations department of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

"I know that my client was interrogated. However, the interrogation has shown that at the moment when Yushenkov was killed Artyom was in another place where several people saw him," Stefanov's lawyer Pavel Astakhov told RIA Novosti. He added that "there are also other facts that testify to Stefanov's innocence, but it is not yet the time to speak about them." On April 23, at the instructions of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Moscow police detained a twenty-year-old Muscovite, Artyom Stefanov, who is suspected of complicity in killing Yushenkov. Artyom Stefanov resembles the composite sketch drawn in accordance with the description of the witnesses.

According to the existing data, in 1995 Artyom Stefanov's father sent a letter to Yushenkov in which he threatened him. The parliamentarian appealed to law enforcement bodies; after that Stefanov was detained and spent six months in custody, being interrogated.