It has been 15 years since prominent Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya was brutally murdered after receiving several threats. Her death shocked the nation and made headlines all over the world. Until this day it is unclear who ordered the assassination. On October 7, 2006, Politkovskaya was carrying groceries to her central Moscow home when she was shot four times at close range. She was found dead in the apartment building’s elevator.
In all, six men have been convicted in the case and the last trial took place in 2014. However, Politkovskaya’s assassination is widely believed to have been a contract killing, with the identity of those who ordered it still unknown. Since then, there has not been any further advancement in the case, even though Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, and Politkovskaya’s relatives, among others, have been calling for investigations to continue into who masterminded the murder and hired the killers.
Much of the investigations in the case led to Chechnya. Rustam Makhmudov, the gunman, was sentenced to life in prison and his brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim were sent to a penal colony for 14 and 12 years, respectively. Former policeman Sergei Hajikurbanov was given 20 years in jail. Chechen criminal and businessman Lom-Ali Gaytukayev was given a life sentence for his role in organizing the murder. Another former policeman, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tailing Politkovskaya and providing the murder weapon to the killer.
Politkovskaya was a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin and her reporting exposed high-level corruption in Russia. She was a renowned war reporter of Russia’s second war in Chechnya and travelled there often, writing award-winning reports for Novaya Gazeta on human rights violations, murders, torture and kidnappings that took place on both sides of the conflict.
Politkovskaya also raised accusations against Ramzan Kadyrov, who later became the head of the Chechen Republic and has led the state in an autocratic and oppressive manner in cooperation with the Kremlin since 2007. At the time of her death, she was finishing a story on the investigation of torture in Chechnya.
Politkovskaya was captured by Russian military forces while on assignment in southern Chechnya in 2001. She was subject to a mock execution before being released. The brave journalist led face-to-face negotiations with terrorists during the Nord-Ost theatre siege in 2002, which ended up with a raid in which nearly 200 civilian hostages were killed. In 2004 Politkovskaya was on her way to assist in the Beslan School Number One hostage crisis when she was poisoned during her flight.
“We will know the truth sooner or later. We shouldn’t stop looking for the truth of what happened”, Nadezhda Azhgikhina, director of PEN Moscow, said in an interview with IPI. “It is a shame there haven’t been any more convictions in 15 years. Anna’s story is a story of courage. She focused on civilians and ordinary soldiers in her reporting and opened a humane viewpoint into the Chechnya conflict. She made Russian journalists visible and known, and there were lots of projects to end impunity after her death. She was a role model for many young journalists. Those people who think they won and made journalists go silent and invisible made a big mistake, because after Anna’s death many journalists appeared despite struggles and continue to do their best to serve the truth and audiences.”
IPI has repeatedly called for a thorough investigation into Politkovskaya’s murder to identify and persecute all perpetrators involved in the crime, especially those who masterminded it. We renew that call today.
IPI named Politkovskaya as one of its World Press Freedom Heroes a few months after her death.
Johann Fritz, IPI’s director at the time, said: “Politkovskaya’s nomination as our 51st World Press Freedom Hero is a tribute to her bravery, but also an acknowledgement of the struggles of the many courageous journalists working in Russia. Her murder is a shock and a loss. IPI believes that she made a significant contribution to journalism and to the cause of human rights. We pay respect to her courage and her exceptional determination and call on the Russian authorities to ensure that there is a thorough investigation into her murder.”
IPI additionally calls for an end to impunity for all crimes against journalists in Russia. According to IPI’s Death Watch, 33 journalists have lost their lives due to their profession in Russia since Anna Politkovskaya’s murder in 2006.
Alexander Litvinenko
Boris Nemtsov
Who poisoned ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko? Many point the finger at Russian authorities for the attack — but 15 years after his death, questions remain.
November 23 marked the 15th anniversary of Alexander Litvinenko's death. He was a spy with the Russian secret services KGB and the FSB before becoming a British citizen and a whistleblower. His case is probably the first known poisoning of a Kremlin critic abroad since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
From among the ranks to battling outside
A Soviet KGB agent prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Alexander Litvinenko later worked for the KGB's successor organization, the FSB. He was an agent for 11 years, from 1988 to 1999. During a press conference in November 1998, he and several colleagues said they were ordered to kill the influential Russian oligarch and politician Boris Berezovsky.
Litvinenko was let go by the FSB a short time later and arrested on a number of occasions. He was suspected or accused of carrying out a number of crimes, ranging from abuse of power to illegally acquiring weapons. He was either acquitted of those charges or they were dropped entirely over a lack of evidence. But that didn't stop the Russian authorities from filing new charges against him, often on the same day older charges were dropped. He received three and a half years' probation in absentia during his last trial, which was the first under Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin.
In 2000, Litvinenko fled to the United Kingdom and applied for political asylum. Litvinenko became a British MI6 officer in 2004, and also established close ties with Spanish intelligence. He soon shared information about the Russian mafia in Europe, including about its connections to Russian officials.
Litvinenko had harsh words for both the Russian intelligence community and new Russian leader Putin. The biggest bombshell, however, was dropped when he and Russian-American historian Yuri Felshtinsky published a tell-all book entitled "The FSB Blows Up Russia." In it, they contend that the FSB organized the 1999 apartment building explosions in Russia, as well as several other terror attacks to justify the war in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin to power. The book also detailed the spy agency's links to criminal groups.
Litvinenko poisoned
According to a British investigation, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned on November 1, 2006. He died three weeks later in a British hospital. An autopsy discovered traces of the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210 in his body.
Investigators at Scotland Yard concluded that he was poisoned by a longtime acquaintance by the name of Andrey Lugovoy, working together with Russian businessman and ex-KGB agent Dmitry Kovtun. The assassination took place during a meeting in a London hotel bar, where Litvinenko had polonium allegedly mixed into his tea. The British intelligence services said the poisoning had all the signs of a "state-sponsored assassination."
In 2007, the government in London asked Russia to extradite Lugovoy on suspicion of murdering a British citizen. Moscow refused, arguing that its constitution prohibits the extradition of its own citizens.
Nearly a decade later, in January of 2016, a British judicial inquiry announced its findings. The judge in the case, Robert Owen, said that the murder of the former FSB lieutenant colonel was "probably approved" by Russian President Putin and by the director of the intelligence service, Nikolai Patrushev.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the crime, calling the British investigation "unprofessional" and "superficial." Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called it a "quasi-investigation" that was not about facts, but rather about allegations based on probabilities and secret information from unnamed intelligence agencies.
The findings of the British inquiry were also backed by the European Court of Human Rights, which said it believed the Russian state to be behind the murder. In September of this year, it upheld an appeal by Litvinenko's widow Marina Litvinenko, ruling that Russia was behind the crime and awarding her €100,000 ($112,000) in compensation.
One of the central arguments was that since polonium-210 is a very rare substance, its production is practically impossible without state assistance. "The planned and complex operation involving the procurement of a rare deadly poison, the travel arrangements for the pair, and repeated and sustained attempts to administer the poison indicated that Litvinenko had been the target of the operation," the court said.
Moscow has had ample opportunities to refute the findings of the British investigation but as the Strasbourg court pointed out, has made no serious attempts to refute the British assessment of the case.
The Kremlin announced that Moscow was "not ready to entertain the Strasbourg court ruling" and Kremlin spokesman Peskov said it was unlikely that the European court even had the powers or the technological capabilities to obtain information relevant to such a case. "To this date, there have been no results from these investigations — so such statements are baseless, to say the least," Putin's spokesperson said. The Russian Foreign Ministry described the court's decision as politically motivated.
Polonium trail traces back to Hamburg
Investigators in Germany also looked into the matter — specifically into the activities of Kovtun, who met Litvinenko in London just prior to his death. According to investigators, Kovtun left behind traces of polonium-210 during a trip from Moscow to London. Small amounts of the dangerous substance were found in the apartment of his ex-wife in Hamburg, where he spent the night, and in the car that picked him up from the airport.
Investigation into poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in Germany in 2006Investigation into poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in Germany in 2006
Also German authorities investigated the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, such as here in 2006Image: picture-alliance/dpa
But in fall 2009, after three years of investigations, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office dropped the case due to inconclusive evidence. Although traces of polonium-210 were indeed found in Hamburg, evidence that the businessman procured the substance, or knowingly brought it to the city, was lacking.
Both Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy deny any involvement in the assassination. Kovtun even claims he was the victim of radioactive poisoning himself in London, for which he had to be treated in a Moscow hospital.
In 2015, Kovtun refused to testify in a London court via video link, arguing that because he was part of the original Russian investigation, he first needed permission from Russian investigators. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation confirmed that Kovtun was subject to secrecy, and that he did not request that this secrecy be lifted. The Russian prosecutor's office and investigative committee have provided no further details from their investigations. According to Andrey Lugovoy, "everything was done to find out the truth."
Russian suspect on 'Magnitsky lists'
Lugovoy blamed the British secret service for the crime, together with the Russian mafia and Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who passed away in England in 2013. The same conclusion was reached by the Russian prosecutor's office.
Lugovoy was elected to the Duma as a representative of the right-wing populist Liberal Democratic Party in 2007, and remains in office to this day.
Lugovoy and Kovtun were later added to the so-called Magnitsky sanctions list for human rights violations. The United States placed both men on the list in 2017, and the United Kingdom followed a year later
https://www.dw.com/en/poison-spies-and- ... a-59910692
A leading Russian opposition politician, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, has been shot dead in Moscow, Russian officials say.
An unidentified attacker in a car shot Mr Nemtsov four times in the back as he crossed a bridge in view of the Kremlin, police say.
He died hours after appealing for support for a march on Sunday in Moscow against the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the murder, the Kremlin says.
President Putin has assumed "personal control" of the investigation into the killing, said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Investigators said the murder could have been "a provocation aimed at destabilising the country".
The investigative committee said in a statement that several motives for the killing were being considered including "Islamic extremism".
US President Barack Obama condemned the "brutal murder" and called on the Russian government to conduct a "prompt, impartial and transparent investigation".
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described Mr Nemtsov as a "bridge between Ukraine and Russia".
"The murderers' shot has destroyed it. I think it is not by accident," he said in a statement published on his administration's Facebook page.
In a recent interview, Mr Nemtsov had said he feared Mr Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Mr Nemtsov, 55, served as first deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
He had earned a reputation as an economic reformer while governor of one of Russia's biggest cities, Nizhny Novgorod.
Falling out of favour with Yeltsin's successor, Mr Putin, he became an outspoken opposition politician.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31669061
I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.
Τίμια προσπάθεια πάντως.