Pair charged with Nemtsov killing include Chechen officer
Print Edition
RUSSIAN authorities have charged two men with involvement in the murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, one of whom served in a police unit in the Russian region of Chechnya, according to a law enforcement official.
A total of five men were frogmarched into a Moscow courtroom yesterday, forced by masked security officers gripping their bound arms to walk doubled over.
Three of them have not yet been charged and are being treated as suspects, said a court spokeswoman.
Court officials named Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev as those charged, and said Gubashev’s brother Shagid was one of the three suspects. Russian media reports said they originated from Chechnya, the mainly Muslim southern republic that has seen violent separatist insurgencies over the past two decades.
The judge at Dadayev’s hearing, Natalia Mushnikova, said Dadayev had admitted involvement in the killing and ordered him to be held in custody until April 28.
“Dadayev’s involvement in committing this crime is confirmed by, apart from his own confession, the totality of evidence gathered as part of this criminal case,” she told the court.
Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, was shot dead on the night of February 27 within sight of the Kremlin walls, in the most high-profile killing of an opposition figure in the 15 years that President Vladimir Putin has been in office.
Several high-profile killings in Russia have been attributed to gunmen from Chechnya and neighboring regions, while those who ordered the crimes were never firmly identified.
Russian officials have denied involvement in Nemtsov’s death and Putin has condemned the killing.
A security official in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia where some of the suspects were detained, Albert Barakhayev, told Russian news agencies Dadayev served for 10 years in the “Sever” police battalion, part of the interior ministry of the of the neighboring region of Chechnya.
Court officials named the other two suspects as Ramzan Bakhayev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov.
Russia’s Interfax news agency, quoting a Chechen law enforcement source, said a man killed in a standoff with police in Chechen capital Grozny late on Saturday was wanted in connection with Nemtsov’s killing.
Nemtsov’s closest aide said the day before his death he clandestinely scribbled a note to her about how he was investigating the involvement of Russia’s military in fighting in east Ukraine.
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