MOSCOW. March 4 (Interfax) - Russian presidential children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov has called on the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the Investigative Committee to demand that the U.S. provide all documents related to the death of Russian boy Maxim Kuzmin adopted by a U.S. family.
"The Foreign Ministry, Prosecutor General's Office, and Investigative Committee should demand all materials on Kuzmin's death as part of international cooperation," Astakhov said on Twitter on Saturday.
"The bruises disappeared, the drugs vanished, the adoptive parents have been vindicated, the authorities dropped claims, the 3-year-old boy fell victim to big politics," Astakhov said.
Ector County Sheriff Mark Donaldson earlier made public Maxim Kuzmin's autopsy findings, saying that the child's death appeared to be unintentional and was caused by a lacerated artery in his abdomen from self-inflicted bruising. The bruises found earlier on Maxim's body also appeared to have been self-inflicted, and experts found no drugs in his system, Donaldson said.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a Friday statement that the forensic evidence examined by specialists "does not support the filing of criminal charges against any persons in connection with Max's death."
Maxim Kuzmin was adopted by a U.S. family last fall from the same orphanage in the Pskov region from which another Russian boy, Dmitry Yakovlev, was adopted to the U.S. in 2008 to die shortly afterwards from a heat stroke in a locked car. Russia recently passed legislation named after Yakovlev banning U.S. adoptions.
The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case on murder charges into Kuzmin's death. The Texas prosecution authorities expressed willingness to cooperate with Russia in investigating the boy's death.