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Emigrant Student Berates Bastrykin at Sorbonne Panel

Russia's top investigator was the subject of a verbal attack by a Russian emigrant student in France, angered over Russia's treatment of Greenpeace activists. Maxim Stulov

A Russian emigrant student in France yelled at Russia's top investigator Alexander Bastrykin this week during a panel at the Sorbonne, calling him a murderer and accusing him of launching politically motivated criminal probes.

An unidentified male student was apparently angered with Bastrykin's evasive replies to questions about the prosecution of Greenpeace activists from the Arctic Sunrise and participants at the opposition rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in May 2012, French media and eyewitnesses reported on the Internet.

An eyewitness of the incident, Lolita Gruzdeva, posted a video on her Instagram account late Wednesday in one of which an unidentified male student yells at Bastrykin in French.

In another video posted by Gruzdeva, the same young man yells at Bastrykin in Russian, "You are a criminal!"

The student's outburst happened after Bastrykin, replying to questions from participants of the meeting, said that the fate of Greenpeace activists would be decided by the court system and that the denial of medical assistance to a hunger-striking suspect in the Bolotnaya trial, Sergei Krivov, was not his business, Gruzdeva wrote on her Twitter account Wednesday.

The meeting participants included members of the Paris-based Russie-Libertes association, a group of civil activists who speak in support of democracy in Russia, its head Alexis Prokopiev wrote on Twitter.

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