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Tuesday, 28.08.2007
Prosecutor General declares murder of Politkovskaya solved
Moscow. The investigation into the murder of Anna Politkovskaya took ten months. Now the State Prosecutor General has declared he knows both who carried out and who ordered the murder. Secret service members and policemen were also involved.
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“We have made real progress in solving the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya,” Russian State Prosecutor Yury Chaika told the press today. “10 people have now been arrested in connection with this grievous crime. Soon charges will be brought against them,” said Chaika.
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Accomplices in the Secret Service and Interior Ministry
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Among those arrested were regrettably a current and a former member of the Russian Interior Ministry and an employee of the domestic secret service FSB, Chaika announced. The officers belonged to a criminal organisation and had supplied the organisers and executors of the Politkovskaya murder with information.
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Chaika said that the murder itself had been committed by a Moscow criminal organisation headed by a Chechen and specialised in carrying out contract killings in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia.
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Chaika claimed to also know who had ordered the killing, but revealed only that it was ordered from abroad.
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Is Berezovsky a suspect?
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Chaika named no names, but everything indicated he meant the exiled billionaire businessman Boris Berezovsky, currently resident in London.
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Chaika argued that the people behind the murder wanted to destabilise the situation in Russia, trigger a crisis, and call on pressure from abroad to force a change of regime. This is precisely Berezovsky’s declared intent.
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As recently as Sunday, Berezovsky fiercely attacked the ‘Putin regime’ in an article in a British paper, and openly called for its overthrow.
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The timing of the publication in the Sunday Times and the State Prosecutor’s announcement the following day is telling. For someone as influential as Berezovsky it would be easy to find about the State Prosecutor’s plans in advance.
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Is there a connection between the Politkovskya and Klebnikov murders?
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Chaika’s hints regarding Berezovsky remained very general, but he added two details. The organiser of Politkovskya’s murder was known to her, and she had met with him, according to Chaika. In addition, there was proof that the same group that killed Politkovskaya was also responsible for the murder of the chief editor of Forbes Russia, Paul Klebnikov.
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US citizen Klebnikov, shot three years ago in broad daylight in Moscow, had authored a series of articles and a book called “Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia”, in which he described what he called Berezovsky’s criminal machinations, which later became the grounds for the charges brought against Berezovsky and subsequent flight.
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Klebnikov also portrayed in a less than flattering light the Chechen mafia boss Nukhayev, who moved in Berezovsky’s milieu, in his book “Interview with a Barbarian”.
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Klebnikov was thus broadly supportive of the Kremlin’s policies, and his message contrasted sharply to Politkovskaya’s. That did not stop Western media attributing his murder to the Kremlin.
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Prosecutor General Chaika, however, did not specify any proof of the link between the Politkovskya and Klebnikov murders.
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Complete surveillance round the clock
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Anna Politkovskaya apparently met her murderer at least twice on the stairs in her apartment block (photo: newsru.com).
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Politkovskaya’s colleagues have now spoken up. In an article on the Novaya Gazeta website, they have traced how her murder was organised. According to their enquiries, a contract was taken out to kill her in spring / summer 2006. Surveillance then commenced at the start of September 2006. A secret service official must have helped to find out her address, since Politkovskaya had only just moved to Lesnaya Street in the centre of Moscow.
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Constant surveillance of their later victim must have been easy for the murderers in August / early September, according to Novaya Gazeta. Politkovskaya had been caring for her ailing mother, and thus her daily routine was very predictable: In the morning she went out with the dog, then she went shopping, then she went to visit her mother in hospital. In the afternoon she took her dog out again and then in the evening she visited her mother again in hospital. Day in, day out the same routine.
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Murder and victim met each other
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The contract killer used this regularity to plan the crime in detail. He even entered her apartment block twice to make sure he recognised her and knew her exact movements. At least one such visit was recorded by CCTV in Politkovskaya’s block.
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The editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta told foreign journalists today that the detectives had arrested the right people. However, he said they were only a few members of a large criminal organisation with connections even in government ministries and the secret service FSB. It would take some time, he said, until the crime was solved down to the last detail.
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A time for reflection for the Western press
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The extent to which Russia’s image is still overshadowed by memory of the Soviet Union became clear in the Western coverage of the Politkovskaya murder last year. Even when few dared to directly accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of Politkovskaya’s murder, opinions expressed in the Western press went far in this direction: “The Kremlin” was alleged to be creating a climate of fear in Russia in which violence against journalists was allowed to flourish.
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The success of this investigation shows that the reality of Russia fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union is far more complex, and that yet again many journalists jumped too quickly to their conclusions.
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If Prosecutor General Chaika puts facts behinds his claims in the coming weeks, than hopefully many Western commentators will start to reflect on their over-readiness to accuse Russia of anything and everything.
(cj/gim/.rufo/Moskau)
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