Prosecutor-General's Office won't question Alexei Pichugin's confessor

Officials at the Prosecutor-General's Office have denied reports to the effect that Father Ioann, the confessor of Alexei Pichugin, former security-department director at the YUKOS oil company, was summoned to the Prosecutor-General's Office for questioning.

Father Ioann was invited to receive the permission to visit Pichugin, a spokesman for the Prosecutor-General's Office noted. Any interrogation subpoena is out of question, he stressed.

Pichugin is charged with masterminding a double murder and an attempted murder.