Moscow City Court upholds Investigative Committee's refusal to investigate two poisonings of Vladimir Kara-Murza

The Moscow City Court has rejected the appeal of politician and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza against the inaction of the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia regarding allegations of two attempted murders, Mediazona reports.

The appeal against the decision of the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow was filed by Kara-Murza's lawyer Maria Eismont. During the hearing, she emphasized that, according to the Khamovnichesky Court's decision of 2021, the politician's statement about the crime was not received by the Khamovniki Investigative Department and no investigation was conducted into it. At the same time, the Zamoskvoretsky Court's decision of 2024, which recognized the refusal to initiate the case as lawful, stated that an investigation was conducted into Kara-Murza's statement. "Thus, we now have two mutually exclusive court decisions in the case," Eismont explained.

Kara-Murza himself, who participated in the hearing via videoconference, emphasized that the ruling of the Zamoskvoretsky Court contains "a direct, documented lie." The politician asked the Moscow City Court to overturn the court's ruling and recognize the Investigative Committee's inaction as illegal, as well as to oblige the department's employees to "at least comply with procedures."

"Your Honor, I am not a naive person. I have been in Russian politics for almost 25 years and have been in opposition to the current regime for all these years. I am not at all surprised that no one will investigate the attempted murders of opposition politicians. This applies to the attempts on the lives of Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, and all crimes of this kind. But I must admit that I was still a little surprised that the Main Investigative Directorate did not even pretend that it was going to investigate anything," Kara-Murza said.

As SotaVision writes , during the hearing the prosecutor insisted that no violations had been committed during the investigations and inspections. As a result, the Moscow City Court upheld the decision of the Zamoskvoretsky Court and rejected the appeal.

• Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two poisonings in May 2015 and February 2017. An investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider revealed that the group of FSB officers who allegedly organized the poisoning of Alexei Navalny was behind the assassination attempts.
• Kara-Murza appealed to the Investigative Committee with a request to open a criminal case under the article on attempted murder, but this did not happen. After the investigation was released, he filed another statement, and later went to court due to the inaction of the department.
• In April 2023, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security penal colony, found guilty of treason, collaboration with an “undesirable” organization, and dissemination of “fakes” about the army.