Killer excess

Former FSB lieutenant colonel has been formally charged with involvement in the “Politkovskaya case”

Yesterday it became known that former lieutenant colonel of the capital's FSB Directorate Pavel Ryaguzov was formally charged with involvement in the murder of Novaya Gazeta columnist Anna Politkovskaya , who was shot dead on October 7 last year. This was announced by the Investigative Committee (IC) under the prosecutor's office. According to investigators, the former security officer gave the killers information about the journalist’s place of residence, thereby exceeding his official authority.

As the Vremya Novostey newspaper reported , in August of this year the Prosecutor General’s Office officially announced the arrest of ten people in the “Politkovskaya case.” Then the Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested former employees of the operational search department of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate (surveillance specialists) Alexei Berkin, Dmitry Grachev, Dmitry Lebedev and Oleg Alimov. According to investigators, they monitored the movements of Ms. Politkovskaya for several months. In this they were allegedly helped by a former employee of the Organized Crime Control Department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate Sergei Khadzhikurbanov. But soon the investigation released two suspects from custody - Berkin and Alimov, apologizing to them, since they had a 100% alibi.

As for the rest of the accused, three of them - brothers Tamerlan, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, according to investigators, were allegedly intermediaries who, on behalf of those who ordered the murder, found intelligence officers to obtain information about the victim. Another arrestee, Akhmed Isaev, allegedly played the role of driver and drove the Makhmudov brothers to designated places in his car. It is still unclear what relation another detainee, Magomed Dimelkhanov, had to the murder of Ms. Politkovskaya.

In September, two more were arrested - the former head of the administration of the Achkhoy-Martan region of Chechnya, Shamil Buraev, and FSB officer Pavel Ryaguzov. The latter, however, as reported then in the Moscow District Military Court, although he was actually arrested, it was not in connection with the “Politkovskaya case”, but on charges of committing other crimes five years ago - kidnapping and illegal entry into a home.

The charges against the former security officer for involvement in the murder of the journalist became known only yesterday. According to the investigation, in September last year Ryaguzov allegedly entered the secret FSB database, entered his personal password, then found the address and telephone number of Ms. Politkovskaya, after which he printed out the received data, which he then reported to Shamil Buraev. And the latter, in turn, passed on this information to the direct perpetrators of the contract killing. It is this trace, as well as two calls to Mr. Buraev’s mobile phone, that, according to the investigation, confirm the officer’s involvement in the murder of the journalist. In addition, the investigation suggests that it was the official who organized the crime.

Thus, at the moment, all ten arrested (none of them admitted their guilt) are accused only of mediation in the murder of the journalist. The main defendants in the case are still at large. The identity of the killer has still not been revealed (unofficial information has appeared that he could be one of the Makhmudov brothers), and the customer, whose identity, according to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, is known to the investigation, is hiding somewhere abroad.

Ekaterina KARACHEVA