Original Material
Judge cancels the arrests of 3 suspects in Nemtsov murder case
A Moscow court has upheld the arrest of Zaur Dadayev, the primary suspect in the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov. The judge canceled the arrests of three other suspects, however, subjecting their current pretrial detention to review by another court.
During the hearing, Dadayev claimed to have an alibi for the night of Nemtsov’s murder. He also accused police of torturing him while in custody, and beating a confession out of him. Dadayev says he was home at the time of the murder, though it’s not yet clear where exactly this was.
“I wasn’t at the murder scene or even in the neighborhood. I wasn’t anywhere around there. No cameras or witnesses [saw me], and one witness said that [the killer] didn’t look like me,” Dadayev said in court.
- On March 10, the men apprehended for murdering Boris Nemtsov told human rights activists that they’d been tortured in police custody. Investigators accused human rights workers of interfering in the case, however, when the torture allegations soon appeared in the media.
- Police have arrested five individuals for Nemtsov’s murder—all men from the Russian North Caucasus.
- Opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on February 27 in Moscow. Authorities have yet to announce publicly what they believe the killers’ motive was.