The case against those accused of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006 collapsed this Thursday as the jury aquitted all three suspects. One day later the presiding judge, Yevgeni Zubo, ordered the Russian Investigative Committee reopen the case,
“The fact that no one at all has been held accountable for this murder sends a very clear message to potential perpetrators: You can do it, and you can get away with it,” said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau. “Brazen killings have become almost routine in the Russian Federation.” link
Rustam Makhmudov, the man suspected of pulling the trigger, reportedly offered to turn himself in during the summer of 2008. However, he remains at large. The Guardian newspaper published a timeline of the Anna Politkovskaya murder case beginning from the day before the former Novaya Gazeta investigative journalist was killed,
5 October 2006
Anna Politkovskaya, Russia’s most famous opposition journalist, gives an interview to Radio Liberty. In it, she talks about her ongoing investigation into the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, expressing the hope that he is tried for numerous human rights abuses.7 October 2006
Politkovskaya is shot dead in the lift of her block of flats in Moscow after returning from a shopping trip. Her killer shoots her in the chest and head, then flees, leaving behind an Izh pistol equipped with a silencer. It is President Vladimir Putin’s birthday.10 October 2006
After three days of silence, Putin dismisses Politkovskaya as "insignificant". He tells the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung that the journalist and Kremlin critic was "well-known only in the west".Late August 2007
Russia’s prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, announces that 10 people have been arrested in relation to the murder investigation. He blames the killing on a Moscow criminal gang, adding that "unfortunately" officers from the FSB – Russia’s spy agency – and police provided operational support.September 2007
The chief investigator in the case is demoted and several new officers are brought in. The investigation is handed over to a new committee headed by a rival prosecutor, Alexander Bastrykin.June 2008
Prosecutors announce that the case is ready to go to court. Six out of the 10 original suspects are quietly released.July 2008
Bastrykin says Politkovskaya’s alleged killer, Rustam Makhmudov, has escaped from Russia and is now hiding somewhere in western Europe. He fails to explain how he slipped out of the country.19 November 2008
The trial of four men accused of involvement in Politkovskaya’s assassination begins at Moscow’s military district court. The judge announces that the trial will be held in closed session in accordance with the jury’s wishes. He is forced to overturn his decision after a juror reveals that this was not true.19 February 2009
The jury is sent out to consider its verdict after closing speeches by prosecution and defence lawyers. Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer for the Politkovskaya family, suggests the defendants may have been the victims of an elaborate set-up. link
We’ll update this post and the timeline as the investigation continues. For now, I’ll leave the last word to Miklos Haraszti, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s representative for media freedom,
]]>“Russia is a country where for years and years now, journalists who cover human rights issues and corruption are being murdered and assaulted… It has to be admitted, at the highest level of the country, that there can be no free speech in a country where the best journalists are afraid for their lives for doing their jobs.” link
It was then that a former KGB agent named Alexander Litvinenko asked to be recognised. The rest as they say is history, not instant history but history nevertheless.
For many months now the Frontline Club has been recording on video most Forum events and experimenting with a system that makes it easy to access the discussions on the Frontline Club website. But there had been numerous technical problems making the system work, and Vaughan Smith and John Coghill had been frustrated trying to exploit the broadband revolution.
After word spread that Litvinenko was seriously ill with what later was diagnosed as Polonium radiation poisoning, an alert Associated Press reporter who had been in the Forum for the Politkovskaya tribute, called wondering whether we happened to have what he said on video. AP got a scoop, and other networks and agencies also began bombarding Frontline with requests, not only from Britain but from all over the world. Frontline had a world exclusive, and suddenly Smith was back in the independent news agency business.
It was a publicity bonanza for the Frontline Club, not only on the nightly news and 24 hour news channels but also on our own website. Coghill made it impossible to come to the Frontline website without being shown the Litvinenko clip. Did this involuntary accessing turn some people off? Coghill assumes that some did grow weary of having to navigate around the clip. But the figures that he has gathered since the Forum comments were posted are impressive: more than 106,000 viewers have watched the video in the four weeks that it’s been shown; more than 33,000 “unique visitors” to the website. And viewers and visitors stayed with the video watching it for more than 2 minutes at a time.
Coghill also decided to make the Litvinenko Forum video available to YouTube. It generated more than 56,000 views. Google video also has shown it and received more than 3,000 views.
Vaughan Smith acknowledges that he had concerns that Litvinenko might have been poisoned by someone who was in the Forum the night that he accused President Putin of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.But there’s no evidence to support that, and Litvinenko as he lay dying, repeated his accusation. For Smith and Frontline, the Litvinenko experience has reminded us all of the price journalists, activists, and whistle-blowers – if that is what Litvinenko turns out to have been – pay for exercising free speech. Smith says that as long as there are brave individuals who take those risks, the Frontine Club will make its platform available to them.
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