Investigators have solved almost 90 percent of all the murders reported last year in Russia, the Investigative Committee said Wednesday.
Investigators solved 88 percent of more than 12,300 homicides and attempted murders reported in 2013, a committee spokesman said. He said that the number of such crimes 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, police identified the perpetrators of over 33,500 old crimes, including 3,400 murders and almost 1,400 rapes, he said.
The U.S.-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.
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