Former Russian police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who was sentenced to twenty years in jail for his function in organizing the 2006 assassination of the distinguished journalist Anna Politkovskaya, has obtained a pardon from President Vladimir Putin after participating in Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Khadzhikurbanov’s lawyer, Aleksei Mikhalchik, on November 14 confirmed media reviews saying the Protection Ministry had recruited Khadzhikurbanov to hitch the warfare in Ukraine in late 2022. Mikhalchik mentioned that after serving six months in Ukraine, his consumer was pardoned however continues to serve within the Russian armed forces in Ukraine on a contractual foundation.
In 2014, the Moscow Metropolis Courtroom sentenced Khadzhikurbanov to twenty years in jail on a cost of mediating the group of the homicide of Politkovskaya, a critic of Putin whose dogged reporting uncovered high-level corruption in Russia and rights abuses in Chechnya. She was shot lifeless in her Moscow condo constructing on October 7, 2006.
Two natives of Russia’s North Caucasus area of Chechnya, Rustam Makhmudov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, have been subsequently handed life sentences after a jury discovered Makhmudov responsible of taking pictures Politkovskaya, whereas Gaitukayev was convicted of organizing the assassination. Gaitukayev later died in jail.
One other defendant within the case, former Moscow police officer Denis Pavlyuchenkov, was sentenced to 11 years in jail after he confessed to organizing the surveillance of Politkovskaya earlier than she was murdered.
Khadzhikurbanov pleaded not responsible and insisted that the cost in opposition to him was primarily based on, what he known as, Pavlyuchenkov’s ”false” testimony.
Politkovskaya’s homicide occurred on Putin’s birthday, prompting hypothesis that it was meant as a ”present” to the president.
Novaya gazeta issued a assertion by its employees and Politkovskaya’s youngsters, Ilya Politkovsky and Vera Politkovskaya, calling the clemency handed to Khadzhikurbanov ”a reality of a monstrous injustice.”
”For us such a ”clemency” shouldn’t be the indication of redemption of guilt and repentance of the assassin. It’s a monstrous reality of injustice and lawlessness, desecration of the reminiscence of the one that was killed for her beliefs {and professional} duties,” the assertion mentioned.
Russia’s coverage of releasing violent criminals, together with murderers, who serve a tour of obligation in Ukraine has outraged many many households of victims. Russia permitted mercenary teams and the Protection Ministry to recruite criminals for the warfare effort in Ukraine amid a scarcity of manpower.
Of their assertion, Politkovskaya’s household and Novaya gazeta’s editors mentioned they weren’t knowledgeable beforehand in regards to the assassin being pardoned, saying it was typical of the state’s dismissive angle towards the case.
”They [still] don’t inform us about their seek for different murderers [of Politkovskaya], particularly those that ordered the killing. That’s as a result of they don’t seek for them. As a result of they cowl them up,” the assertion mentioned.
In 2018, the European Courtroom of Human Rights dominated that Russia ”had didn’t take enough investigatory steps to seek out the particular person or individuals who had commissioned the homicide.”
Politkovskaya was born in New York in 1958, the daughter of a Soviet diplomat from Ukraine.
She was the laureate of quite a few Russian and worldwide awards together with an Amnesty Worldwide International Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2001, a PEN Freedom to Write award in 2002, an Olaf Palme Prize in 2004.
In 2007, she turned the primary particular person ever to obtain a posthumous UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.