PARIS: Police in France detained four people suspected in a plot targeting exiled Russian rights activist Vladimir Osechkin, who exposes abuses in Russian prisons, France’s national anti-terror prosecution office said.
In an interview with The Associated Press Friday, Osechkin, who founded a rights group for prisoners in the notoriously tough Russian carceral system, said he believed Russia’s security services were behind a plot to kill him after he saw video evidence from French police, including video footage of his home.
“I saw how everyone was filming, how they prepared the sites from which to shoot,” he told the AP, adding he believes “this was an expensive special operation, sanctioned and financed from Moscow.”
The General Directorate for Internal Security, France’s counter-espionage and counterterror intelligence service, has been the leading the investigation, the anti-terror prosecution office said on Thursday evening.
It said four men aged between 26 and 38 were detained Monday but gave no details about their nationalities, any possible motives for allegedly targeting Osechkin or whether the men are suspected of links to foreign spy services. Osechkin said he believes some of the men detained are from Dagestan, a region in Russia’s south Caucasus.
