FLY – Relatives and colleagues of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya commemorated the 15 years since his assassination by denouncing that the principals, still unidentified, now benefit from the statute of limitations. The commemorative gathering at the headquarters of the Novaja Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, was held amid growing pressure from independent media, the opposition and NGOs critical of the Kremlin.
Very sharp against the Kremlin, especially against its bloody war in Chechnya and the leader of this Caucasian Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, Politkovskaya, investigative journalist from Novaja Gazeta, was killed in the stairwell of her home on October 7, 2006, the birthday of Vladimir Putin.
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Fifteen years after this crime, which caused protests in Russia and around the world, only the material perpetrators were sentenced. “The murder has not been clarified,” he told theAfp son Ilija Politkovskij, 42 years old. During a ceremony held on the newspaper’s premises, he criticized the authorities’ lack of reaction in this affair, noting that neither the family nor the Novaja Gazeta they got answers.
Further backlash, starting today Thursday, “the principals have officially escaped criminal responsibility” due to the statute of limitations for the crime, the newspaper deplored. The journalist’s colleagues will now try to obtain the reopening of the investigation in court, “until the name of the principal is revealed”.
In the newspaper premises, the journalist’s office has been transformed into a memorial: computers of the time, round glasses resting on an open book, piles of sealed letters and old newspapers. “I think everyone knows who the instigator is, but no one talks about it,” David Arakeljan, 18, a journalism student who attended the ceremony in Moscow and who says he was inspired by Politkovskaya’s work, told AFP.
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The spokesman for the Russian presidency Dmitry Peskov he assured him that the Kremlin “wants all those responsible for this crime – instigators and perpetrators – to be punished”, but that it is “very difficult” to establish the truth. Serghej Sokolov, deputy director of Novaja Gazeta, he said “that the political leadership (of the country) knows the name” of the principal.
The European Union for its part has called on the Russian authorities to establish the truth and allow “an open and transparent judicial process”. While the US secretary of state Antony Blink he stressed that “the continuing impunity for those who ordered his killing undermines freedom of speech and of the press, as well as other human rights in Russia”.
In 2014, five men were found guilty of organizing or participating in the journalist’s murder and were sentenced to heavy prison terms. The Chechen Lom-Ali Gaitoukaev, the logistics organizer, died in prison in 2017. But for the opponents, the real instigator is to be found elsewhere, perhaps within the high authorities of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, whose citizens have been convicted of other murders of a political nature, such as that of Boris Nemtsov, killed in Moscow in 2015. Novaya Gazeta has been regularly criticized by the strongman of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused of numerous and brutal abuses.
In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Russia for failing to “implement the appropriate investigative measures to identify the people behind the murder” of Anna Politkovskaya.
Created in 1993, the Novaja Gazeta remains the target of intimidation and attacks. In recent years, he has published inquiries into the actions of Russian mercenary groups and the persecution of sexual minorities in Chechnya.
The commemorations took place in a difficult context for the independent Russian press, under constant pressure from the authorities, which classified several media as “foreign agents”, a controversial designation that subjected them to tedious administrative procedures, or banned several newspapers. as “you do not want”.
“What is happening today, Anna Politkovskaya described it at the time. Much of what she wrote turned out to be a prophecy,” regretted his son Ilija.
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