The Russians were detained on suspected involvement in the assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarbiev of the Chechen separatist top.
"The government is attending to the matter, and doing everything necessary to certainly promise due progress. We gathered that much from facts offered us." Mr. Gryzlov refused to provide whatever details-the Foreign Ministry treats the information as classified.
Lyubov Sliska, Duma First Deputy Speaker, also hopes the suspects will be released thanks to Russian diplomatic efforts, she said to Novosti following Mr. Soltanov's address.
Miss Sliska also omitted facts the deputy minister had provided the house. She only said no witness on the case had offered whatever proof of the Russians' involvement in the crime. Russia's stance on the case stays unchanged. It regards a detention made at a legation villa as trespass of the international law, conventions and understandings.
Foreign Ministry information satisfied Vice-Speaker Sergei Baburin. "I cannot repeat classified information, so I merely say that Foreign Ministry information satisfies me," he remarked. The ministerial spokesman officially confirmed utter absence of facts bearing out an alleged Russian connection of the Yandarbiev murder. Russia is firmly demanding the innocent men released. "There is a political undercurrent to the case-it is spearheaded not against the defendants proper but against Russia improving its situation, added the MP. He described the Russian government's conduct in the affair as "energetic and efficient", and said he hoped Russia would get out with an untarnished reputation.
Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, who had spent the three preceding years in Qatar, died in Doha, February 13, in a blast of his boobytrapped Toyota Land Cruiser.
Three Russian nationals, on an official trip to Qatar, were detained by Qatari secret services in Doha in the small hours of February 19. One, diplomatically immune, was promptly released. The other two, secret service officers, were in Qatar on an anti-terror mission, which coincided in time with the assassination by sheer chance. A premeditated murder indictment came February 26. The two suspects pleaded innocent at preliminary hearings of April 11, and said they had been third-degree -battered and deprived of sleep. Dogs were set on them, too.
Russia is demanding its unlawfully arrested citizens released.
"We demanded from the Qatari top to provide the Russians' unhampered return home," Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister, said on a previous occasion.
