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28.08.07
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Showing Progress
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By Shaun Walker
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Prosecutors Announce Arrests in the Politkovskaya Case, But are They Legitimate?
Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika yesterday announced progress in the Anna Politkovskaya case, telling President Vladimir Putin that the murder of the journalist last October has been solved. At a press conference in Moscow, he told journalists that 10 people had been arrested for the murder of the Novaya Gazeta journalist, including employees of the Interior Ministry and the FSB.
The announcement came three days before what would have been Politkovskaya’s 49th birthday, and almost a year after the journalist and prominent Kremlin critic was assassinated in her Moscow apartment building.
The person who ordered the crime, said Chaika, was living outside Russia and wanted to “destabilize the situation in the country… and return to the previous ruling system, when money and oligarchs decided everything.” This would suggest either the London-based Boris Berezovsky, or former YUKOS CEO Leonid Nevzlin, currently living in Israel. The Kremlin and Russian authorities have long suggested that Berezovsky is behind the murders of both Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko.
Experts and former colleagues of the assassinated journalist expressed satisfaction that arrests had been made, but skepticism at Chaika’s conclusions.
“It’s good that there has been progress in the case,” said Igor Yakovenko, secretary general of the Russian Union of Journalists. “If we believe everything that Chaika says then this is the end of the sad tradition of the murders of journalists in Russia going unsolved.” But, he said, there were several doubts about the allegations. “It’s worrying that even before the investigation has been officially completed, they are pointing the finger at people abroad,” he said.
Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper where Politkovskaya published her hard-hitting reportage on Russian politics and the conflict in Chechnya, expressed similar doubts. “We have known about this for a while. We’ve worked together with their investigation and we trust their professionalism,” said Muratov. “But we’re absolutely amazed that they have openly stated that they know who ordered the crime before the investigation has even been completed.”
Muratov confirmed that a security services official had been arrested, and revealed that the FSB operative in question was a Moscow-based lieutenant colonel. “At this stage, I don’t want to reveal any more,” he said. “Let’s wait first for the court case.”
Today’s Russian newspapers carried more information about those arrested, and it was revealed that the FSB operative in question was Pavel Ryaguzov. Kommersant reported that Ryaguzov’s friends and colleagues had been highly skeptical about the charges, stating that he was under investigation for an incident that occurred in 2002, but otherwise was an excellent employee who would not have been involved in such an affair. Ryaguzov lived with his wife and two children in a small two-room apartment, and specialized in crimes involving illegal weapons dealings, said the paper.
Chaika stated that the killing itself was carried out by a Chechen criminal gang operating in Moscow. He also linked the group to the killings of Andrei Kozlov, the corruption-fighting banker who was gunned down last year, and Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov, who was murdered in 2004.
He refused to name the mastermind, but separately stated that Russia’s long-standing efforts to have Boris Berezovsky brought before a Russian court could bear fruit soon, if the former oligarch is extradited from the UK to Brazil, where he is wanted on charges of financial irregularity, and from there to Russia.
If all Chaika’s claims are to be believed, it would mean that current members of Russia’s security services are under the command of Boris Berezovsky. “Unfortunately, the level of corruption in Russia can bring many unpleasant surprises,” said Gennady Gudkov, a former FSB colonel and current member of the Duma’s security committee.
Gudkov was certain that the London-based exile was behind the killing. “My information, and the information I have received from my colleagues, leads me to believe that Berezovsky himself, or people controlled by him, are behind both this act and many acts of terrorism in Russia, including the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings and the Nord-Ost theatre siege,” he said.
But others expressed heavy scepticism at the Berezovsky link. “We have no guarantees that the names of those who really ordered the killing and the names of those who will be accused of it will be the same,” said a statement from Novaya Gazeta’s editorial team posted on the newspaper’s website. “We have no complaints about the investigative team. We’re working together… But we want to be certain that nothing ‘expedient,’ with no actual relation to the crime, influences this joint work.”
Indeed, many might wonder if it’s a little too convenient that Chaika’s statement neatly confirms what have been the Kremlin’s allegations from the start. “It makes you wonder if we are dealing not only with an ‘ordered’ killing but with an ‘ordered’ investigation too,” said Yakovenko of the Russian Union of Journalists.
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