Photo: Open Information News Agency 

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has readdressed to its Lipetsk regional branch complaints regarding the hacking of email, Skype and Facebook accounts of three lawyers working with Agora Human Rights Association.

The human rights lawyers were informed of the above on 3 August in a letter from Mr V. Drevesnikov, Senior Inspector at the Third Regional Department of the Directorate for Procedural Oversight of Investigating Authorities, part of the Investigative Committee’s Main Directorate for Procedural Control.

A correspondent from Open Information News Agency reports that the body’s official response read as follows: “Your application regarding breach of privacy and violation of the privacy of correspondence, in connection with the hacking of email accounts and servers used by lawyers working with Agora Human Rights Association has been forwarded to the Lipetsk Regional Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for review”.

Legal analysts from the Agora Association say that either a special body for the investigation of cyber crime is acting under the guise of the Lipetsk branch of the Investigative Committee, of the Investigative Committee does not read the letters that it receives.

Lawyer Dmitry Dinze, whose Skype account was hacked, commented, “Recently I have not been able to understand the Investigative Committee’s reasoning at all. Can it really be the case that the matter has been readdressed to Lipetsk because this is where the crime took place? That is to say, the Investigative Committee has established that all the attacks originated from there? The investigators are doing what they feel is necessary without explaining the reasoning behind their actions. All we can do is guess. Let’s see what happens next”.

It should be noted that, in addition to Dmitry Dinze’s Skype account, the Gmail and Yandex email accounts and Facebook account of Voronezh lawyer Olga Gnezdilova were also hacked in May, and unknown individuals hacked into Moscow lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina’s Gmail account.

The response by the Investigative Committee can be read here.