The customer was not found

The Supreme Court of Russia upheld the verdict in the case of the murder of the Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006

The Supreme Court of Russia upheld the verdict in the case of the murder of the Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006. In 2014, the jury found the five accused: the brothers Rustam, Jabrail and Ibrahim Makhmudovs, their uncle Lom Ali Gaitukaev and former law enforcement officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov.

At the same time, the appellate instance by 6 months, that is, up to 13 and a half years of imprisonment, reduced the punishment of Jabrail Makhmudov, whom the investigation calls the accomplice of the murder. Punishments to the rest of the defendants remained the same: Rustam Makhmudov and Lom ali Gaitukaev, recognized as the executor and the organizer of the murder, will serve lifelong terms. For 20 years, a former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, whom the investigation considers another organizer of the crime, will spend 20 years in a colony. Ibrahim Makhmudov, recognized, like his brother Jabrail, an accomplice of the murder, sentenced to 12 years in prison. Lawyers who declared the need to cancel the sentence and return the case to the stage of preliminary hearings intend to achieve the excuse of their clients. And the victims - the children of Anna Politkovskaya - continue to fight for the investigation to finally establish the customer of the murder and bring him liable.

The protection of the defendants stated the intention to appeal to the Supreme Court on the same day when the jury delivered a verdict and it became clear that there would be no acquittal. The hearings held in the Moscow City Court called lawyers unprecedented in the number of violations of the rights of the accused and their defenders.

What fair jury verdict can we talk about if they listened to only one defense witness?

“We believe that the verdict cannot be fair when so many procedural violations are committed,” says Tatyana Okushko , lawyer Lom-Ali Gaitukaeva, “more than five times have been made by defense of the call and interrogation of more than 40 witnesses. Of these more than 40 witnesses, only one was interrogated! We have listened to only one witness to the experts, but we were deprived of the right to interrogate experts. It was not possible to mention the state -owned, in the presence of the jurors, the state -owned statements of the defendants, which were incorrect and directly prohibited by law. To convey, but we were not heard. "

Of the entire amount of evidence that have gathered for 7 years, the investigation left only those that confirm the accusation

According to lawyer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, Alexei Mikhalchik, the court forbade protection to pay attention to the jury for inconsistencies in the details of telephone connections, gaps in the wiretapping of telephones and other circumstances that could cause substantiated doubts about the guilt of the defendants.

“The case was already carried out to the court,” says Alexei Mikhalchik , “from the entire amount of evidence that have gathered for 7 years, the investigation left only those that confirm the accusation, and removed all the materials that contradict their versions. The key figure in this process, oddly enough, were not the Makhmudov brothers, not Gaitukaev, and not Khadzhikurbanov, but a certain collection of the service. Outdoor observations in our country, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov , who, as it turned out, took part in several custom-made murders . The consequence of the reason for the talk of Sergei Khadzhikurbanov We, I think, will get a dozen.

Another interesting point, it can be abandoned in a common piggy bank of these violations. In my opinion, he is very indicative and understandable, ”continues the lawyer Alexei Mikhalchik,“ we said in the process that not one of the two hundred examinations conducted in the case gives evidence that one of the defendants was involved in this case, including that Khadzhikurbanov was involved in this case. There are no fingerprints on weapons, somewhere else, there are no traces of DNA. The prosecutors who supported the charges of this process began to make allegations that Khadzhikurbanov refused to pass samples for a comparative study and that this explains this result of examinations. In fact, in the case file there are dozens of protocols for the seizure of samples for a comparative study. All that the prosecutor said about, all this in really Khadzhikurbanov provided without any problems. But the court allowed the prosecutor to express this statement, and he forbade the side of the defense at all to say anything about it under the pretext, clearly far-fetched. There are at least a hundred such violations. And today the Supreme Court, in my opinion, contrary to its own principles, which he declares in the decisions of the Plenum, refused to satisfy the complaint. "

According to the prosecution, in the summer of 2006, Lom-Ali Gaitukaev received an order and money (150 thousand dollars) to organize the murder of the Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya. It was he, who asserts the investigation, developed a plan for the murder and attracted Rustam, Jabrail and Ibrahim Makhmudov and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Sergei Khadzhikurbanov and Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov to the implementation of his nephews. Pavlyuchenkov, who agreed to cooperate with the investigation and at the end of December 2012, sentenced to 11 years in prison as one of the organizers of the murder, became the key to accuse the figure. It was his testimony that the prosecutors referred during the hearing if there were no other evidence of the involvement of the defendants in the commission of the crime.

The prosecutors managed to convince the jury that it was Gaitukaev who instructed Pavlyuchenkov, who at that time the special forces of the Moscow police in operational-search work, organize surveillance of Anna Politkovskaya a few months before her murder, get a gun and transfer it to Rustam Makhmudov. And in early October 2006, according to the official version, Pavlyuchenkov “handed the Chechens” to “monitor the“ object ”and on October 3, 5 and 6, 2006, they already arranged the rehearsals of the murder, and the 7th finally fulfilled the criminal plan. The jury believed that Ibrahim Makhmudov these days stood at the intersection of the garden ring and Malaya Dmitrovka, waiting for Anna Politkovskaya’s car, then to call his brother Jabrail and report the approach of the victim. Jabrail brought Rustam to the crime scene, who shot at Anna Politkovskaya. Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, according to the prosecution, actively participated in the coordination of the criminal group.

Lawyers have already announced their intention and continue to dispute the verdict, and also prepared complaints to the European Court of Human Rights, since they consider the right of their clients to a fair trial violated. In Strasbourg, a complaint filed by the children of Anna Politkovskaya, who do not consider the murder by the revealed, but justice, who has failed. Representatives of the victims refused to participate in the proceedings on the appeal in the Supreme Court after all defense petitions were rejected, including the right to testify in their native (Chechen) language in order to explain in detail the details that are difficult to express in Russian.

To the question of the degree of involvement of these people, one can fully answer only if the crime is fully disclosed. And it is not disclosed!

“The position of the victim’s side in this case is known: the fully observance of the rights of the accused, so that there is no doubt about the impartiality of the court,” says the lawyer of the children of Anna Politkovskaya Karinna Moskalenko , “for the appeal, we prepared the document. It says that we are not at all mistaken that this crime has not been disclosed, the criminal case is not brought to the end, and more than two years In the second stage of the trial, the investigation for more than two years has not been pleased with the investigation, so that this sentence enters into legal force. If the crime is fully disclosed! They did all these moments of the hypocritical of the investigation, two sentences have become final, but, unfortunately, this does not bring us to the main goal.

The observer of Novaya Gazeta Anna Politkovskaya, known for his publications on the theme of Chechnya and the North Caucasus, was killed in the entrance of his own house on October 7, 2006.