Date

07/10/2006  

First

Anna  

Surname

POLITKOVSKAYA  

Sex/Age

F, 48  

Incident

homicide  

Motive

J  

Place

stairwell entrance  

Job

journalist  

Medium

print  

Federal District Plus

Moscow  

Street, Town, Region

Lesnaya St, Moscow  

Freelance

no  

Local/National

national, "Novaya gazeta"  

Other Ties

Memorial  

Cause of Death

shot, contract killing  

Legal Qualification

105 (murder)  

Impunity

trial, acquittal, 19 February 2009  

[Entry revised, 13 September 2011]

"I WOULD NOT START SAYING WE NOW KNOW WHO ORDERED THIS CRIME"

GDF digest, 534, 29 August 2011

The day after Pavlyuchenkov’s arrest, the Investigative Committee’s spokesman Vladimir Markin told journalists that investigators not only had information about the organiser of the murder but of its assumed instigator. He did not offer any more detailed information because, he said, it would be premature to do so. The new suspect’s lawyer Tamara Kuchma says there was no link between her client and the person behind the killing. “That’s totally excluded,” she told a correspondent from the Interfax news agency. “There is no suggestion about those who were behind the murder.”

There was a guarded response at Novaya Gazeta to the news that the circle of suspects had now widened. The newspaper’s chief editor Dmitry Muratov said that “the arrest of Pavlyuchenkov is a success”. He was unsettled, however, by the speed with which the investigators began to speak about the instigator of the crime when they had only just arrested its organiser. “I know what happens with such dramatic announcements,” he said. “Immediately after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya the Prosecutor General Yury Chaika declared that the presumed instigator of the crime was Boris Berezovsky. … Statements about the person behind the crime do not fill me with enthusiasm,” Muratov told RIA Novosti. “It seems we cannot escape politically-motivated acts.”

The paper’s deputy chief editor, Sergei Sokolov, takes a similar view. “I would not start saying that we know who ordered this crime. There are a certain number of interpretations and these refer to more than one or two individuals. In order for someone to be a suspect as the instigator of such a crime there must be an unshakeable argument. I believe that a long road lies ahead, requiring detective work and investigation, before we reach the person behind it all.”

The head of the presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, responded with cautious optimism to the latest announcement. “If the investigation is on the right trail then the case is approaching its solution and those responsible will be punished. For me it is most important that the investigators are not sitting idle. The progress that is being made gives cause for hope,” Interfax cites Fedotov as saying. “However, the greatest danger in such cases is that the solution will be forced to fit a foregone conclusion and then innocent people could find themselves behind bars, while those who were involved in the murder remain at large.”


MAN BEHIND THE POLITKOVSKAYA MURDER IS KNOWN TO US

Police Lieutenant-Colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who is suspected of organising the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, has been arrested in Moscow. Investigators will now petition for him to be remanded in custody. Pavlyuchenkov formerly headed a section at the Moscow City police department responsible for surveillance.

Those investigating the journalist’s murder also say they have information about the person who ordered the crime. It would be premature to make the information public now, however, says the statement released by the Russian Investigative Committee [which deals with the most serious crimes].

“Investigators have established that Pavlyuchenkov was paid to organise the murder of Politkovskaya and set up a criminal group consisting of the three Makhmudov brothers [two of whom stood trial in 2008-9] and other individuals,” reads the Committee’s statement. “Then Pavlyuchenkov, who at that time headed a section at the Moscow City police department responsible for surveillance, ordered his subordinates to keep a watch on the journalist so as to establish the pattern and time of her daily movements around the city.”

The lieutenant-colonel then bought the weapon, investigators say, drew up a plan and assigned each of his accomplices a particular role in the preparation and execution of the murder. The Investigative Committee asserts that Pavlyuchenkov himself gave this information and the weapon used in the killing directly to Rustam Makhmudov and those who were helping him. During several days before the crime was committed Makhmudov and his helpers followed the movements of Anna Politkovskaya, say the investigators.

Formerly Pavlyuchenkov was included in the investigation as the main witness. The journalist’s presumed killer Rustam Makhmudov was arrested in Chechnya in May this year. He was charged on 2 July. A former organised crime squad policeman and two of Makhmudov’s brothers were tried for their part in the murder in 2008-9 but in February 2009 the jury acquitted them unanimously. The Politkovskaya family lawyers, Karinna Moskalenko and Anna Stavitskaya, then succeeded in returning the case for further investigation.

The investigation into the killing is due to conclude on 7 September 2011.

Adapted from the report on the Business and Finance news website
http://www.bfm.ru/news/2011/08/24/zaderzhan-podozrevaemyj-v-organizacii-ubijstva-politkovskoj.html


From “PARTIAL JUSTICE” report (June 2009)

Shortly after 4 pm on 7 October 2006 Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in Moscow. There was no doubt she had been targeted because of her work as a journalist. Over the following months the murder was investigated by Russia’s law enforcement agencies and ten men were detained. In an interview published in Novaya gazeta on 8 October 2007 (No. 77) the lead investigator from the Prosecutor General's office said that work was also progressing on the much more difficult task of proving who ordered the killing. That list of suspects, Petros Garibyan told Anna’s newspaper, had been reduced to no more than four names.

In November 2008 several men accused of involvement in her murder went on trial in Moscow. The killer had fled the country and was on the wanted list; the person who ordered Anna’s death had still to be identified and charged. Two brothers and a former officer from the organised crime squad were accused of having helped to organise the murder. The prosecution were convinced that a fourth man, a serving FSB officer, had played a major part in planning the killing, and would say so in its closing speech at the trial. There was insufficient evidence to charge him, however, and he was accused of another offense, to be heard at the same time.

On 19 February 2009 the jury decided that the case against those charged with organising Anna’s murder had not been proved. The charges of extortion against two of the accused were also not upheld. All four were acquitted and immediately released.

The murder of an internationally known journalist in 2006 stirred worldwide outrage. Politkovskaya’s killing drew attention, once again, to Russia’s reputation as one of the deadliest countries for reporters. International bodies and organisations within the country called for a thorough investigation of the murder and an end to the killing with impunity of journalists in Russia. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in collaboration with its Russian colleagues, set up an inquiry to investigate this disturbing and persistent phenomenon.

Yet the verdict, when it came, repeated a pattern already seen in two other cases since 2002. In that year those accused of killing Dmitry Kholodov, military correspondent of Moskovsky komsomolets, were acquitted. (They would be acquitted yet again in 2004 after a second trial.) In 2006 the alleged murderers of Paul Klebnikov, chief editor of the new Russian edition of Forbes magazine, were found not guilty.

At a press conference after the Politkovskaya verdict there was discussion as to why the investigation and trial had resulted in an acquittal (“The whole system stands condemned,” Novaya gazeta, No. 17, 20 February 2009). It was no wish of Anna Politkovskaya’s family that a scapegoat be found for her murder, said their attorney Karinna Moskalenko. In her experience as a lawyer, faced with insufficient evidence to convict she had sometimes “looked with astonishment” at the injured party and asked herself, “What good will it do if they send these people to prison? Wouldn’t you really prefer the truth?” Her clients in this case wanted nothing but the truth. There was no quarrel with the jury’s decision. The jurors had shown their independence from the very beginning and guaranteed a fairer and more open trial. The shortcomings lay with the prosecution and the evidence the investigators had provided: “The case should not have reached the court in such a condition,” commented Politkovskaya family attorney Anna Stavitskaya.

The investigators operated under difficult conditions and had been constantly obstructed, said Sergei Sokolov, chief editor of Novaya gazeta. If they had been able to work freely, and to fully exercise their powers to examine any document and interrogate any individual, their case would have been much stronger. “Neither during the investigation nor afterwards did I hear complaints from the investigators that anyone was obstructing their work,” countered Karinna Moskalenko. “If they are to defend their honour as professionals they must speak out about the circumstances and instances of obstruction that hamper them in conducting a proper investigation.” They should have immediately submitted a formal complaint, in accordance with existing procedural norms, naming the interfering organisations or individuals. Only by asserting their own powers and independence could they ensure that justice was done.


NEW TRIAL?

On 5 August 2009 the objection of the prosecution service to the acquittals in the Politkovskaya trial case was upheld by the Supreme Court and a new trial was ordered.