28 Aug 07 | Comment, News and features
Ten people have been arrested in connection with the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. This was announced at a news conference given on August 27 by the General Prosecutor, Yuri Chaika. It was confirmed by the special investigator from the Prosecutor General’s Office, Pyotr Garibyan. Charges have been brought against the arrested concerning several episodes of criminal activity. The court legitimated detentions made from August 15-23 and sanctioned the arrests. Active investigations are now being carried out, including interrogations and searches.
Of course, it’s too early to talk about solving Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. Not all the accomplices have been detained, while the guilt of those who have been arrested is yet to be proved. In such a complicated case, mistakes are possible while the presumption of innocence cannot be cancelled, even considering that it was murder in the first degree. All must be proved cogently so that the case does not break down in court. That is why we cannot disclose all the details known to journalists from Novaya gazeta who continue their own investigation into Anna’s murder.
So who has been arrested? First, there are several members of a rather big and well-known criminal ethnic gang that specialises in contract murders. Second, there are several officers (former and acting ones) from law enforcement bodies and the special services. We know their record of service and their record of criminal episodes, and we have an idea of how roles were assigned in the preparation and completion of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder.
The number of the arrested and those who are to be arrested raises several points.
First, one may assume that separate investigations by the Prosecutor General’s Office and by Novaya gazeta led to at least two stable criminal groups that cooperate ‘fruitfully’ with each other. Anna wrote about this interpenetration of crime and law enforcement bodies many times. An absence of control allows warrant officers and majors to sell their official powers. It must be stressed that this is a joint enterprise established years ago and based on grave crimes and offences. If we unravelled this tangle, then the details of many famous unsolved cases would be disclosed.
Second, the murder was planned and prepared meticulously by professionals who had had experience of solving such kinds of ‘problems’.
Third, it had a high cost. It’s too early to talk about those who ordered this murder. Besides, we don’t have guarantees that real clients’ names will be mentioned in the indictment. And that wouldn’t be the investigation’s fault.
We have repeated many times that we don’t have complaints against those who are investigating the murder of Novaya gazeta’s journalist. We are cooperating, and the mutual opinion is that this cooperation is effective. We just want to be sure that certain ‘rational reasons’ that do not relate to this matter directly do not influence the outcome of our joint work. The outcome we need is clear. The killers, accomplices and real clients of this murder must be established and convicted.
Analysing the circumstances of Anna’s death, we approximately reconstructed the crime. The mediators got the order in the spring or summer of 2006. At the beginning of September, Politkovskaya began to be shadowed. Prior to that, her actual address (she had moved to a flat on Lesnaya Street not long before that) was established using the facilities of the special services. She was shadowed from morning till night. Generally, Anna was very careful, considering the number of hidden and evident threats. She always reported to editorial staff about all ‘peculiarities’ that happened to her and her relatives.
But by the end of August and beginning of September the situation changed. Her mother was in hospital and she had just buried her father. Anna’s routine was practically the same every day then, as opposed from her usual working days. In the morning she had a walk with her dog, and then she went shopping and went to see her mother in the hospital. In the afternoon she again took her dog for a walk and late in the day she went to the hospital again. When you have problems with your relatives you don’t think about yourself too much. ANNA did mention, though, some strange people that she had met on her staircase.
Yes, those strange people – to put it more exactly one man. We think that the killer had entered the block of flats at least twice before, following Politkovskaya and scouting the place. On 7 October at 16:01 he fired five shots. The first and the fifth bullet (checking shot) were shot into the head. A remodeled gas gun with silencer was left at the crime scene. There wes no previous crime records of the gun.
The killer rushed out of the door, got in a car and left the crime scene. The publication of the frames fixing all this, made by someone and passed to journalists, prejudiced the investigation hugely. As you understand, there are a lot of essential details lying behind this chronicle that cannot be disclosed yet.
We often hear questions and reproaches as to why the investigation has taken so long, and why we journalists have been saying ‘no comment’ for such a long time.
As for the terms of the investigation. Anna Politkovskaya published over 500 articles in Novaya gazeta. Almost each one of them could have been the reason for the murder. It’s not only material about Chechnya. The geography is rather large. It’s Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Astrakhan, Bashkiria, St Petersburg, and Moscow. That is why initially there were many versions. One of the first ones was about a special squad officer in the city of Khanty-Mansiysk whose family name is Lapin. This man threatened Politkovskaya many times. Now he is being tried in the court in another case. Lapin’s accomplices, who are also officers, were wanted by the federal security service. The investigation of Politkovskaya’s murder had questions for them too. One of them was found in the city of Khanty-Mansiysk. He didn’t hide; he lived at home and continued his service. But it turned out that these people didn’t have any connection to this murder.
This way, step by step, version by version, the skilful investigative work was done. Many things were happening around these two investigations – ours and the official one. Agents provocateurs tried to foul the trail and divert the investigation. Some people tried to get the money offered by Novaya gazeta’s shareholder Alexander Lebedev. There were also threats and we will discuss those at another time.
And finally. Our reserve in communicating with our colleagues could have caused offence. Some people said we were taking care not to fall foul of anyone and that’s why we kept silent. The yellow press carried out their own investigations and communicated silly things tallking about ‘witnesses’ and giving their names (mainly Anna’s relatives and people who had no relation to this matter). All that endangered those people’s lives. Some people insisted on the ‘correct’ versions given by high ranking officials. (By the way, neither presidential aide Igor Shuvalov nor Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov who made loud statements about this case, have been interrogated yet).
Such was the background to the investigation. This is the answer to the question ‘why has it taken so long?’ And we will wait as long as need be to be sure that the sentence is indisputable and true.
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01 Jan 07 | Russia
Just before my last trip to Chechnya in mid-September (2002) my colleagues at Novaya Gazeta began to receive threats and were told to pass on the message that I shouldn’t go to Chechnya any more. If I did, my life would be in danger.
As always, our paper has its ‘own people’ on the general staff and the ministry of defence – people who broadly share our views. We spoke to people at the ministry but, despite their advice, I did go back to Chechnya, only to find myself blockaded in the capital, Grozny.
The city was sealed off after a series of strange events. Controls were so tight you couldn’t even move between different districts within the city, let alone make your way out of Grozny on foot.
On that day, 17 September, a helicopter carrying a commission headed by Major-General Anatoly Pozdnyakov from the general staff in Moscow was shot down directly over the city. He was engaged in work quite unprecedented for a soldier in Chechnya.
Only an hour before the helicopter was shot down, he told me the task of his commission was to gather data on crimes committed by the military, analyse their findings, put them in some order and submit the information for the president’s consideration. Nothing of the kind had been done before.
Their helicopter was shot down almost exactly over the city centre. All the members of the commission perished and, since they were already on their way to Khankala airbase to take a plane back to Moscow, so did all the material they had collected. That part of the story was published by Novaya Gazeta.
Before the 19 September issue was sent to the printers, our chief editor Dmitry Muratov was summoned to the ministry of defence (or so I understand) and asked to explain how on earth such allegations could be made. He gave them an answer, after which the pressure really began. There should be no publication, he was told.
Nevertheless, he decided to go ahead, publishing a very truncated version of what I had written. At that point, the same people at the ministry who had claimed our report was false now conceded it was true.
But they began to warn of new threats: they had learned that certain people had run out of patience with my articles. It was, in other words, the same kind of conversation as before my last trip to Chechnya.
Then we heard that a particular officer, a ‘Lieutenant Larin’, whom I had described in print as a war criminal, was sending letters to the newspaper and similar notes to the ministry. The deaths and torture of several people lie on his conscience and the evidence against him is incontrovertible.
Soon there were warnings that I’d better stay at home. Meanwhile, the internal affairs ministry would track down and arrest this self-appointed military hitman, and deputy minister (Vladimir) Vasilyev would himself take charge of the operation. I was supposed to remain at our apartment and go nowhere.
But they made no progress in finding ‘Larin’, and I began to realise that this was simply another way of forcing me to stop work. The newspaper decided I should leave the country until the editors were sure I could again live a normal life and resume my work.
The paper was forced to omit from my story the sort of detail that is vital to the credibility of an article like this, which suggested the military themselves had downed the helicopter.
All my subsequent difficulties began with those details. If these details surface, the ministry of defence warned our chief editor, that’s the end for you . . . In fact, since I was moving around the city at the time, I can personally testify to what happened, as can others who were there with me.
And these were no ordinary citizens: among them were Chechen policemen and Grozny Energy Company employees who, like me, were trapped inside the city. FSB (former KGB) General Platonov was also there. Currently, he is a deputy to Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of United Energy Systems, a key Kremlin player throughout the 1990s and a hawk on Chechnya.
All these saw and knew exactly what I know. Platonov is not only Chubais’s deputy but remains a deputy to FSB director Patrushev (in early 2001, the ‘anti-terrorist operation’ in Chechnya was transferred from the military command of the Combined Forces Group to the FSB and its director Patrushev in Moscow placed in overall charge).
No one else saw and knew as much about what happened as Platonov – he couldn’t help but see it. Not one person was allowed into the city centre after 9.00 am that morning. And yet a helicopter was downed there. Different branches of the military are split over future policy in Chechnya.
There are good reasons why the recent public statements of defence ministry spokesmen all repeat the same phrases: ‘We deny the possibility of negotiations’; ‘It’s out of the question’;
“We are just doing our job.” Indeed they are: their ‘sweep and cleanse’ operations have become even more brutal. Let us suppose that those representing certain other branches of the military on the ground in Chechnya are pursuing a rather different policy.
That is where you should seek the reason for the deaths of all the commission members. I’m just a small cog in that machine – someone who happened to be in the thick of events when no other journalists were around.
Those who want to continue fighting seem to have the upper hand; they represent the more powerful section within the so-called CFG, the Combined Forces Group.
To avoid repetition of the disastrous lack of coordination between ministries of defence and internal affairs and the FSB during the first Chechen conflict in 1994-96, overall command of army, police and other paramilitary and special units in the present war was given to the military.
Although the FSB supposedly now exercise overall control of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’, the military are too strong for them. On the fateful day the helicopter was downed and the commission perished, not even servicemen and officers were permitted to enter the central, cordoned-off area of Grozny.
Only defence ministry officials were allowed through. Even FSB and ministry of justice people were kept out; that was extraordinary. No one was permitted to enter the area where the helicopter was about to fall: representatives of other military bodies and organisations, even ranking officers, had no right to go there.
I don’t think we should expect too much from the defence ministry, nor from President Putin (in the light of the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. Editor). He has received carte blanche to take the measures and employ the forces he considers necessary in Chechnya.
I’m thinking of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent activities and words spoken by Chancellor Schroeder when Putin was visiting Germany. As you know, it was then said that Europe should re-examine its stance on Chechnya.
Their position was already pretty feeble and bore no relation to the real state of affairs in Chechnya and the abuse of human rights there. If, however, they are going to alter their position, then it’s clear what will happen. In practical terms they’ll support Putin.
Whatever he does will be fine by them. I think he’s been working steadily and persistently towards that end for some time. And I’m sure he’ll make good use of it now. Not for the first time in the present war, there’s been a battle to see whose nerve is stronger.
Putin held back (over the West’s post 9/11 War on Terror) for some while: we shan’t support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, he said, but we’ll offer them back-up. Then he agreed to supply them with arms and, evidently, advisers. In exchange he received a free hand in Chechnya.
That’s the way things are likely to go, I’m afraid. I can’t say when it will happen, but whatever happens there will be a more intensive ‘liquidation of Chechen partisans’. As always in Russia, however, it all depends on the methods to be used. What will the ‘liquidation of Chechen bandits’ amount to this time?
Will they herd everyone else into concentration camps or hold repeated sweep operations in all the population centres in Chechnya? I can’t answer for Chechen President Maskhadov, but will offer a brief analysis of his actions.
In my view, he is doing nothing whatsoever. He has retreated into his shell and is thinking, to the exclusion of all else, about his own immediate future – he’s forgotten the Chechen nation. Just as the federal authorities in Moscow have abandoned the Chechens, so now have the other side.
The nation has to fend for itself, with no leadership or protection. It survives as best it can. If people need to take revenge for their tortured and murdered relatives, they will. If they need to say nothing, they’ll keep their mouths shut.
In such circumstances, which are the equivalent of a civil war, and under continuing pressure from the federal forces, no one today can say whom the Chechen nation would vote for if elections were held. No one now has any idea whom they’d elect and in that respect everyone has committed the same enormous mistake.
Maskhadov has obviously been driven into a corner. But the struggle for independence has become an obsession with him: he will hear of nothing else. I don’t really understand what use independence will be to him, when he, Shamil Basayev and his immediate bodyguard are all that’s left.
The first duty of a president is to fight for the well-being of his nation. I have my own president and it makes no difference that I personally did not vote for Putin. He remains the most important figure in the Russian state.
And I’d like him to enable me, and everyone else, to live a normal life. I’m referring to the laws that should govern our existence. I find myself in a situation, however, where no one gives a damn how I survive.
I’m cut off from my family. I don’t know what will happen in the future to my two children. It is not law that rules Russia today. There’s no person and no organisation to which you can turn and be certain that the laws have any force.
I have no thoughts about my future. And that’s the worst of all. I just want everything to change so I can go back and live in Moscow again.
I can’t imagine spending any length of time here. Or in any other place, for that matter. I must do all in my power to return to Moscow. But I have no idea when that will be. If people in my country have no protection from this lawless regime, that means I survive here while others are dying.
Over the last year I’ve been in that position too often. People who were my witnesses and informants in Chechnya have died for that reason, and that reason alone, as soon as I left their homes.
If it again proves the case, then how can I go on living abroad while others are dying in my place?
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12 Mar 02 | Awards, Awards year slider
[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1485793747082{margin-top: 50px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_custom_heading text=”FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AWARDS 2002″ font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1485875902812{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1485876580666{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”]
Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Awards exist to celebrate individuals or groups who have had a significant impact fighting censorship anywhere in the world.
Awards were offered in: Defence of freedom of expression; circumvention of censorship; whistleblower of the year; and an ironic award for services to censorship.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”85397″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_custom_heading text=”WINNERS” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1483465213837{margin-top: 0px !important;}”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Jiang Weiping” title=”International Whistleblower of the Year” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”85409″]Jiang Weiping is a Chinese journalist who was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sentenced to 8 year’s imprisonment in 2001 for exposing government corruption. He was released on 4 January 2006 after being granted a remission of his punishment.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Şanar Yurdatapan” title=”Best Circumvention of Censorship” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”85410″]Şanar Yurdatapan is a Turkish composer and song writer who is campaigning against the prosecution of publishers by the Turkish authorities. In his position as the director of the Initiative for Freedom of Expression, he is advertising a ‘civil disobedience’ movement for freedom of speech since 1995.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Anna Politkovskaya” title=”Most Courageous Defence of Free Expression ” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”85407″]Anna Politkovskaya was an internationally recognised Russian journalist with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta who was indefatigably reporting on human rights violations in Chechnya and exposing corruption of governmental officials. She was killed in the elevator of her apartment building on 7 October 2006. Investigations into her murder are ongoing displaying a weak judicial system and lack of transparency.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Silvio Berlusconi” title=”Award for Services to Censorship ” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”85408″]The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was ironically awarded with this precious award for his increasingly authoritarian grip on the Italian media.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes”][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_custom_heading text=”JUDGING” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_row_inner el_class=”mw700″][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
Criteria – Anyone involved in tackling free expression threats – either through journalism, campaigning, the arts or using digital techniques – is eligible for nomination.
Any individual, group or NGO can nominate or self-nominate. There is no cost to apply.
Judges look for courage, creativity and resilience. We shortlist on the basis of those who are deemed to be making the greatest impact in tackling censorship in their chosen area, with a particular focus on topics that are little covered or tackled by others.
Nominees must have had a recognisable impact in the past 12 months.
Where a judge comes from a nominee’s country, or where there is any other potential conflict of interest, the judge will abstain from voting in that category.
Panel – Each year Index recruits an independent panel of judges – leading world voices with diverse expertise across campaigning, journalism, the arts and human rights.
The judges for 2005 were:
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Jason Burke” title=”Journalist” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83295″]Jason Burke is a prize-winning author and Chief Reporter for the Observer. Having lived in Middle East and Southwest Asia for more than a decade, Burke has become an expert on terrorism and saw many of the key events described in his books on Al-Qaeda at first hand. His writing gives a critical perspective to the foundations of the ‘War on Terror.'[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Geoffrey Hosking” title=”Professor ” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83297″]Geoffrey Hosking is Professor of Russian History at University College London and the author of several books. In 1988, he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on Gorbachev’s forms and their implications for free speech. He was involved in setting up of voluntary association’s post-Soviet Russia and is now writing a history of Russians in the USSR.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Baroness Helena Kennedy” title=”Barrister” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83293″]Baroness Helena Kennedy has acted in many leading cases including the Brighton Bombing Trial, the Guildford Four Appeal and many of the trials of battered women who kill their partners. She is Chair of the Human Genetics Commission and a member of the World Bank Institute’s External Advisory Council. Her new book Just Law on the changing face of British justice will be published in paperback in March of this year.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Hari Kunzru” title=”Journalist” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83296″]Hari Kunzru is a freelance journalist and editor living in London. He has worked as a travel journalist since 1998, writing for the Guardian, Time Out and the Daily Telegraph. His first novel The Impressionist won the 2002 Betty Trask Prize and the 2003 Somerset Maugham award and was also shortlisted for several awards, including the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Bill Nighy” title=”Actor” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83298″]After training at Guildford School of Dance and Drama, Bill Nighy has won countless awards for his stage and screen performances including the Evening Standard Best Actor Award for Love Actually. Other films include Still Crazy, Lawless Heart, Shaun of the Dead and I Capture the Castle. Most recently he was nominated for an Olivier Award for his stage performance in Blue/Orange.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][staff name=”Chris Woodhead” title=”Writer and academic” color=”#28a7cc” profile_image=”83294″]In 2002, Professor Chris Woodhead resigned as Chief Inspector of Schools in order to be able to speak out on educational and political issues. He now writes for the Sunday Times and other national newspapers and appears regularly on many television and radio programmes questioning half-baked orthodoxies and ridicule the jargon that so often these days passes for thought. He also holds the Sir Stanley Kalm Chair in Education at the University of Buckingham.[/staff][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
