During his trip to Finland and Sweden on November 5 through 9, Vladimir Ustinov met with Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask.
"During a conversation with his Swedish counterpart, Vladimir Ustinov touched upon an issue of principal importance for Russia regarding the refusal of the Swedish government to extradite Russian national Magomed Uspayev for criminal prosecution," the ministry said in a news release posted on its website.
The ministry said Russia had provided sufficient evidence to Sweden of Uspayev's guilt, and that Swedish courts also deemed this evidence sufficient.
The press release said investigators had established Uspayev's immediate involvement in the abduction of Vladimir Yatsina, a photojournalist working for Russian information agency Itar-Tass, in the war-ravaged Chechen Republic in the North Caucasus in 1999.
The ministry said Russia had offered Sweden the necessary guarantees common of international practice that Uspayev would have the right to a legal defense and would be safe from torture or maltreatment.
Yatsina was abducted while on assignment in Chechnya in the summer of 1999, and murdered on February 20, 2000.
Uspaev, who claims to be a cousin of the late Chechen militant leader Aslan Maskhadov, killed by Russian Special Forces in March 2005, arrived in Sweden in 2002 and received a residency permit in 2004.
Uspaev's attorney, Richard Backenroth, said last year that while his client did not deny having participated in the Chechen conflict, he denied abducting and killing Yatsina.
Until fairly recently abductions were widespread in Chechnya, whose economy was devastated in two wars in the 1990s-early 2000s between the republic's separatist regime and federal troops.
