Politkovskaya Case: Doors Closed

Published: 20 November 2008

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Jurors in the case involving the murder of outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya balked at entering a courtroom with media there, and the judge reversed himself and put the trial behind closed doors.
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
The reversal by Judge Yevgeny Zubov came days after he ordered it open, despite prosecutors’ contentions that they planned to use large numbers of secret documents as evidence.
His reversal sparked complaints from lawyers for Politkovskaya’s family

They said there were no grounds to close the trial and to reverse course would damage Russia’s image.

Politkovskaya’s son, Ilya, who had been critical of the investigation as targeting only underlings, not those who ordered and organized the killing, said he was dismayed by the ruling.

“Of course we do not like the closed trial,” he told the BBC. “There is nothing wrong with having journalists there. A lawyer for the family, Karinna Moskalenko, added, “I think this trial should have been open, not only because all trials should be, but because she was a public figure and the public should know the circumstances of her killing.”

The defendants’ lawyers had also asked that the trial be open.

Three Accused Plead Not Guilty

Three men accused as accomplices in  Politkovskaya’s murder appeared in court Monday: Chechen brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makmudov and former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov are accused of carrying out surveillance and providing technical help. All said at the hearing that they had nothing to do with the murder and have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Police said that another Makmudov brother, Rustam, is the killer, but that he has left Russia.

Politkovskaya’s son earlier told the BBC, “The people in the dock are just the underdogs… There were a lot more people involved in this killing, not just the three who appeared in court.”

Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Russia’s two wars in Chechnya and of then- President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead in her apartment building two years ago. Though the image of the baseball cap-wearing gunman had been captured by the apartment building’s security cameras, police have not made an arrest, and have said they do know who ordered the killing.

Russia Dangerous Turf for Journalists

Politkovskaya’s 2006 killing is one of nearly 50 contract-style murders of journalists in Russia since 1992; the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia the third most-dangerous country in which to work as a journalist, behind Iraq and Algeria. Last week, a suburban newspaper editor was found unconscious and bloody in his garden in the Moscow suburb of Khimki and is now comatose in the hospital. Doctors said Mikhail Beketov, 50, was beaten with metal pipes, and that they had to amputate his leg.

Beketov, who had written about corruption and campaigned against cutting down a nearby forest for a highway, had received death threats before.

“He told us about a week before he was attacked that he had been informed that an order to kill him had been taken out,” close friend Lyudmila Fedotova told Reuters. Other friends said his car had been burned earlier this year.

--Beth Kampschror