“Aren’t you the customer?”

Lawyers for Anna Politkovskaya's family are investigating instead of those who should be doing it

On June 9, 2014, the Moscow City Court announced the verdict on the killers of Anna Politkovskaya. The killer Ruslan Makhmudov was caught and convicted, and the organizers of the crime, Lom-Ali Gaytukaev and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were on trial. Another - the main - organizer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov (lieutenant colonel of the secret subdivision of the Moscow police department, which is engaged in outdoor surveillance) was convicted in a special order, since he made a deal with the investigation, promising to name the customer. Didn't name. Rather, he said something about Berezovsky, but even the Investigative Committee publicly denied this version, which for some reason arose immediately after the murder of the Novaya Gazeta columnist. However, the deal was not terminated.

The customer was not mentioned at the trial - or rather, they did everything possible so that the lawyers for Politkovskaya's children did not particularly touch upon this topic.

The case of the customer is separated into a separate proceeding. What this proceedings consists of, who is involved in it - neither the victims, nor their lawyers, nor Novaya Gazeta knew for a long time. Only recently a paper arrived, according to which the term of the investigation in the case was extended. The document was signed: senior investigator for especially important cases of the GSU (Main Investigation Department) of the RF IC Solonkin S.A.

In the meantime, under circumstances not fully clarified in the colony, the organizer of the murder, Gaitukaev, who knew a lot, but did not say anything to the investigation, died in the colony, and the other organizer, Pavlyuchenkov, is awaiting trial in April, which should decide on his parole. However, parole is explained by a serious illness, and it is not in the rules of Novaya Gazeta to challenge the verdicts of doctors. However, it seems that both the deal with the investigation and Pavlyuchenkov's stay in the prison hospital all the time of his imprisonment are connected with the fact that he said during interrogations exactly what they wanted to hear from him. Namely: there is no “Chechen trace” in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the “demon of Russian politics” Boris Berezovsky is to blame for everything.

This was relevant: Prosecutor General Yury Chaika hinted at this version immediately after the assassination, and President Putin spoke in the same vein.

FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DMITRY PAVLYUCHENKOV AT THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION
“After my consent, Gaytukaev grinned, turned to the guy who was driving, in my opinion, said something to him in a language I did not understand, and then in Russian he said to me: “Now you are with us in the same sleigh, and if you try move out, then you will get to your God before this journalist, because Zakaev and Berezovsky are not ordinary people, they will not offer bullshit, but they will crush you like a fly.

Pavlyuchenkov was interrogated in September 2011. Since then, however, the Investigative Committee has done nothing to interrogate Zakayev, who, according to Pavlyuchenkov's testimony, seems to be in the know.

In fact, neither the lawyers for Anna Politkovskaya's family nor Novaya Gazeta ever took these assumptions seriously, but they wondered:

if the version of involvement in the murder of Berezovsky is still one of the main ones, then why is no one even trying to interview witnesses and, possibly, suspects?

There can be only one answer: the case of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya was written off to a dusty archive, like many other “inconvenient cases”, whose trail is diligently trampled in Chechnya, such as the murder of Paul Khlebnikov (editor-in-chief of the Russian Forbes), the execution of a politician Boris Nemtsov, the assassination of former Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya Yan Sergunin, the destruction of the Yamadayev clan...

In order to make the investigation somehow move forward, the lawyer of Vera and Ilya Politkovsky, Anna Stavitskaya, did the work of the Investigative Committee and interviewed Mr. Zakaev at his place of residence (the city of London) on the subject: are you the customer? The lawyer's questioning of the witness last week was sent to the Investigative Committee, so that, firstly, he would be attached to the case file, and secondly, they would make quite accessible gestures (under the legal assistance agreement with the UK) to interrogate Zakayev - you need to check the testimony the organizer of the murder of Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov.

Lawyers' survey cannot be attached to the case. But they can do nothing more. Which option will the investigation choose? The answer will make it possible to finally understand whether they are looking for the assassin of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, or they are just pretending.