MOSCOW, January 15 (RIA Novosti) – Russian investigators have solved almost 90 percent of all the murders reported last year, the Investigative Committee claimed Wednesday.
Investigators solved 88 percent of over 12,300 homicides and attempted murders reported in 2013, the committee spokesman said. He noted that the number of murders in Russia had fallen 6.8 percent compared to 2012.
The spokesman said that during the last year, investigators also solved 570 murders and 204 rapes that had occurred in previous years, and they are working on closing old cases from years or decades past.
Between 2008 and 2012, according to the committee spokesman, Russian police identified the perpetrators of over 33,500 old crimes, including 3,400 murders and almost 1,400 rapes.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists has criticized Russia’s success rate in closing crimes against journalists, ranking it every year in the top 12 countries that give impunity to killers of reporters since its Impunity Index was launched in 2008.
The nonprofit organization put Russia in ninth place on the index in 2013, with 14 unsolved murders of journalists since 2003.
