MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian investigative journalist who was savagely beaten in a Moscow side-street two years ago said on Tuesday that he had identified one of his attackers as a security guard at an annual pro-Kremlin youth camp.
“I saw this person in a photo-report from the Seliger camp,” Oleg Kashin told a news conference. “He was a member of camp security, one of those they take from the Spartak [Moscow football club] gangs.”
Kashin, who writes on politics and social issues for the Kommersant daily, was attacked near his house in Moscow on November 6, 2010. He suffered severe head and leg injuries and lost a finger in the assault.
Pro-Kremlin youth camps take place every summer at Seliger, some 350km from Moscow. President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have been regular visitors to the camps.
Kashin, who is a member of the newly formed anti-Putin opposition council, said he had passed on the photo of his alleged attacker to investigators this August, but no action had been taken.
The journalist said after his recovery in 2010 that he believed pro-Putin youth groups were behind the attack.
Medvedev vowed in 2010 that the attackers would be brought to justice. “Whoever is behind this crime, he will be punished, irrespective of his status,” he said. No one has been detained in connection with the assault, which made international news.