- Date
- 03/07/2003
- First
- Yury
- Surname
- SHCHEKOCHIKHIN
- Sex/Age
- M, 53
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- J
- Place
- hospital
- Job
- journalist
- Medium
- Federal District Plus
- Moscow
- Street, Town, Region
- Central clinical hospital, Moscow
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- national, Novaya gazeta
- Other Ties
- Duma deputy
- Cause of Death
- poisoning?
- Legal Qualification
- 105 (murder)
- Impunity
- investigation, halted
[Update, April 2009]
Yury Shchekochikhin, a Duma deputy, a well-known media commentator and human rights activist, died at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow on 3 July 2003.
Shchekochikhin is famous among Russia's journalists for his investigations of issues relating to corruption and organized crime. Nor did he abandon his journalistic credo after he became a Duma deputy in 1993. In the Russian parliament Shchekochikhin became a member of the Security Committee and the Committee for the Prevention of Corruption. He was kept under surveillance and threatened; his investigative work was stolen. He became a parliamentarian, he said, to gain access to documents that a regular journalist would never see. When he was appointed deputy chairman of the Duma committee on Security, Shchekochikhin launched a campaign to find and rescue those imprisoned and held hostage in Chechnya.
Recently he was gathering material about the activities of several highly-placed officials at the Prosecutor General's Office. It was expected that Shchekochikhin would propose that two of the Prosecutor General's several deputies be relieved of their duties with the committee on corruption.
Yury Shchekochikhin died suddenly and this has given rise to many rumours and assumptions, including allegations of foul play. The doctors are not saying anything specific yet. Only a thorough forensic examination can give answers to the numerous questions that arose after the journalist's death.
CJES, 27 (2003)
CASE CLOSED FOURTH TIME
The Investigations Committee of the Russian prosecutor’s office has closed its investigation into the death of journalist and Duma deputy Yury Shchekochikhin.
Konstantin Shchekochikhin, the journalist's son, has announced that the Investigations Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office has notified him of the closure of the case on 6 April 2009. “The case has been closed because my father died of Lyell’s syndrome, which the Investigations Committee believes cannot be caused artificially. I have my doubts about that. Therefore I shall contest this decision,” said Shchekochikhin's son Konstantin.
Commented Vladimir Markin, an official with the Investigative Committee: “No narcotic substances, powerful poisonous substances, heavy metals, or thallium were found in the dead man’s body. Experts have concluded that Yury Shchekochikhin died of acute epidermal necrolysis.” Markin said the experts had found no evidence of the journalist’s poisoning.
Alexander Bastrykin, chairman of the Investigative Committee, had criticized the Investigations Department of the Committee for refusing to open a criminal case on the basis of the parliamentarian’s killing. An investigation was subsequently opened in April 2007 and a criminal case, in April 2008.
Update, CJES 15 (2009)
“A JUDGE THREATENED, A PROSECUTOR DISMISSED,
A WITNESS MURDERED – THE ‘THREE WHALES’ CASE”
Article by Yury Shchekochikhin
(Originally published in “Novaya Gazeta” on 2 June 2003;
translated for CPJ by Ekaterina Lysova)
[…] This is not a story about tables and chairs. This is a different - a completely different - story. It gives a direct indication of Russia’s place in the world, the kind of country we are living in, and the history we are in the process of writing. It is a direct reflection of the president and parliament we have elected, and of our politically appointed government officials.
The Three Whales case is symbolic of our time.
It is a symbolic case for the Russian parliament because its Security Committee devoted an entire session to the affair, and the Duma sent dozens of letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office. It is a symbolic case for Europe and America because the authorities there have already arrested the Western business partners of Three Whales. Their official requests for information to our Ministry of Internal Affairs and Prosecutor General’s Office have been left dangling, however. And it is a symbolic case for the rule of law in Russia. Don't tell me any tales about the independence of judges or that “only a court can convict a person!”
Until we have a fair trial in this case, files will be destroyed, witnesses intimidated or murdered - and as for investigators, they will either be [wrongfully] convicted or will abandon the case, distressed by their failure to break down the wall of silence. A criminal case has been opened, wrongfully, against Investigator Zaitsev; a criminal case has been opened against the customs officials who first sounded the alarm in the Three Whales affair; but where is the criminal investigation into the multimillion-dollar smuggling that took place?
It all sounds like a joke. Strangely, the independent presidential prosecutor Loskutov has not received a letter from Frank Helmut, the German criminal police representative in Moscow. The letter directly names the dummy German companies established by Three Whales principal Zuyev. It names Zuyev’s accomplices who— with him — are suspected of money-laundering and creating a criminal organization. Finally, the letter informs the Russian side of Italian arrests made in the case, as well as stating the readiness of the German authorities to collaborate with Russia on this case!
Yet Prosecutor Loskutov says he does not have this letter. It has not arrived, perhaps, or it has been lost. Perhaps, it has just disappeared somewhere in the corridors of the Prosecutor General’s Office. I can give him a copy of the letter, but will that make any difference?
In any case, that is is not the point. What is really our elected president actually capable of doing? Can he provide some pensioner with a telephone? Can eh utter some pretty sentence in German? Or can he take off in a fighter jet, as in a recent photo op? “Who is this Mr. Putin?” I can hardly say how many times my foreign colleagues asked me that when Putin suddenly appeared at the top of Russian political system. Three years have since elapsed. And I still haven’t found a clear answer to this question.
Twice I have appealed to the president with personal inquiries regarding, believe me, important state issues. Twice I have had to repeat the same phrase: “I understand your desire to create a working team, but it seems to me not a team but a pack of wolves has been circling around you. And Russia is tired of living under this ruling pack.” Twice, in response, I have received meaningless notes from Kremlin clerks. […]
From THE ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE. UNSOLVED KILLINGS OF JOURNALISTS IN RUSSIA
(Committee to Protect Journalists, New York, September 2009): Appendix 1 –
Excerpts from the work of journalists slain in Russia since 2000
http://cpj.org/reports/CPJ.Anatomy%20of%20Injustice.pdf