Scientist Tsvetkov, accused of a series of murders, is hospitalized after “interrogation with prejudice”

Maybe he had a heart attack

The court extended until June 14 the arrest of hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov, an employee of the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters of the Russian Academy of Sciences, whom artificial intelligence and the investigation suspected of murders 20 years ago. The scientist himself, with signs of a heart attack (probably happened during one of the nightly interrogations), is being prepared for hospitalization in the prison hospital. Human rights activists and entire scientific teams sent appeals to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation with a request to study the work of the investigation in this story. Details found out “MK”.

Recall that Tsvetkov was detained on February 16, 2023 at the Domodedovo airport, when he returned from another scientific expedition. The reason was that the sketch of the killer of several people in Moscow, compiled in 2003, coincides by 55% with Tsvetkov’s biometric data. During one of the night interrogations, Alexander signed a confession, which he later retracted.

“Alexander was recently transferred from quarantine SIZO No. 7 to SIZO No. 4, where he underwent an ECG and other studies,” says his wife, also a scientist at the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – They found an aneurysm and other signs indicating a heart attack “on the legs”. He is sent to the hospital. On the eve of his arrest, he underwent examinations, everything was in order. Doctors believe that he could have suffered a heart attack just at the moment when his confession was taken. The fact is that when the lawyer was admitted, he told – Alexander was pale, almost white, he could hardly breathe and speak. My husband has been working at the institute since 1996 and has never had any experience of communicating with law enforcement officers. So he did not endure the “interrogation with prejudice.”

Meanwhile, on April 3, MK published https://www.mk.ru/social/2023/04/03/v-dele-obvinennogo-v-serii-ubiystv-uchenogo-nashlis-strannye-nestykovki.html documents and witness statements testimonies that testify to Tsvetkov’s alibi (on the day of the murders, he was hundreds of kilometers away on the expedition). And only on April 12, the investigation for the first time interrogated those people whose words we quoted in the article.

As a result, the director of the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Krylov became the first person interrogated (one of the days when the murders of two women were committed, Tsvetkov was with him on the expedition). According to him, the investigation insisted that extracts from orders and magazines, photographs, and eyewitness statements are not evidence of Tsvetkov’s innocence. Krylov was surprised that the words of doctors and candidates of sciences meant little to the investigator, and the testimony of the criminal, who identified the killer in Alexander, was not in doubt. By the way, the recidivist stated that Tsvetkov had tattoos, and even described them (in fact, the scientist never tattooed himself, he asked for a damaging examination).

There was another interesting point: the investigator tried to attribute to Krylov the words that he supposedly could not say whether all the expedition members were exactly in place, whether Tsvetkov had not gone anywhere. At the request of Krylov and his lawyer, the protocol had to be rewritten.

At the court hearing to extend the preventive measure, the investigation did not report on the testimony of defense witnesses. As a result, the arrest was extended until June 14.

And the scientific community, and not only the native Institute, stood up behind Tsvetkov. Employees of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “National Park” Pleshcheyevo Lake “wrote a collective appeal to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation about the unjustified persecution of the scientist. From there, the answer has already come that the appeal has been transferred to the prosecutor’s office of the city of Moscow for a response.

“First, any AI system used for “identification”, if it is used as evidence – during the investigation or in court, must be certified,” says HRC member Igor Ashmanov. – Its quality must be tested and proven. Like a traffic cop’s radar, it must be checked and activated before leaving the line. Such mechanisms simply do not exist now. Second moment. 55% in the Tsvetkov case is generally absurd. Recognition in face recognition systems should be done with 95%-99% confidence. And 55% is just a negative result, “grandmother said in two.” Third. There can be no “recognition” of faces by an identikit at all and should not be. An identikit is just data of a different nature, they cannot be compared with a photograph, except perhaps only at the stage of search, inquiry. And the identikit of twenty years ago, “according to the witness” – well, this is generally nonsense. Well, the fourth. We are clearly dealing with the use of AI as a means of removing responsibility from investigators, at the expense of a universal almost religious respect for “technology”. Although I can’t speak about Tsvetkov’s innocence – I don’t know all the details, but about the guilt of AI and its deification by investigators – yes. It is worth recalling the arrest of the soloist of the Mariinsky Theater and the director two years ago, with the same reason – 70% of the coincidence in face recognition by some AI system. Both were detained, beaten, refused to check their documents (!), taken to the police station, where they were later released.

Human rights activists sent a request to the prosecutor’s office with questions about the certification and quality of the AI ​​system and about whether the result of a 55% match of a face with an identikit after 20 years is really used as a basis for filing charges and for detention in a pre-trial detention center.