On Friday they confirmed an indictment against former police officer Sergey Khadzhikurbanov for participating in the plot to kill the journalist, an outspoken critic of then-president Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party.
Khadzhikurbanov, who served as a policeman in Moscow’s Central Department for Combating Organized Crime, denies involvement and refuses to testify in court.
“Khadzhikurbanov has been charged due to the fact that, having been released from prison on Sept. 22, 2006, he went on to lead an organized criminal group in both the preparation and the actual commission of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya,” Vladimir Markin, a spokesperson for the committee investigating the journalist’s death, told Russian ITAR-TASS news agency.
Markin said that Khadzhikurbanov joined a criminal group composed of Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, former Lieutenant Police Colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, and Rustam Makhmudov, who was arrested in his native Chechnya in May in connection with the murder.
Khadzhikurbanov was acquitted of Politkovskaya’s murder in 2008 but the case was reopened, in part, court officials said, due to the fact that Makhmudov and Gaitukayev are now in custody.
Gaitukayev was charged along with Pavlyuchenkov in September for their involvement in the case, but the former is already serving time for an unrelated murder.
Pavlyuchenkov was serving as the head of surveillance for Moscow’s main internal affairs unit, and charged with gathering information about Politkovskaya’s habits and disseminating it to fellow plotters. He pleaded guilty after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
In articles penned for Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya wrote often about rampant corruption at all levels of government. She also heavily criticized the government’s actions in Chechnya. She was murdered in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006, Putin’s birthday, fueling speculation that he himself had ordered her killing.
