An investigative committee put out a statement Wednesday alleging that Lt. Colonel Dmitry Pavlychenkov, who served at the time of Politkovskaya’s death as a senior Moscow police investigator, had received cash from an unknown source to orchestrate the murder.
As the chief of four units of surveillance for the Moscow Ministry of Internal Affairs, Pavlychenkov ordered that Politkovskaya be placed under constant surveillance, the investigating committee said .
He subsequently hired the Makhmudov brothers from Chechnya and their associates and helped them develop a plan to procure weapons and murder the journalist.
“Investigators have information about the alleged mastermind of this crime. However, we believe it would be premature to disclose it at this point,” Vladimir Markin, the Investigative Committee spokesman told the press.
Rustam Makhmudov, suspected of being the gunman who took Politkovskaya’s life, was arrested in his home state in May. Two of his brothers were charged as accomplices, but were acquitted in 2009. A Moscow police officer was acquitted then of charges that he supplied the murder weapon. The Supreme Court overruled both acquittals, but no re-trial has started.
Pavlychenkov was a witness in the first court proceedings. “He figured in the first trial dealing with the journalist’s murder as a secret witness for the prosecution, and, therefore, he was questioned in a secret procedure,” a press secretary for Novaya Gazeta, the paper where Politkovskaya worked, told Interfax.
“He said then that he had learned about the murder from the defendants, but now the investigation has every reason to presume that he was an accomplice,” said Nadezda Prusenkova, the press secretary.
Politkovskaya wrote extensively on government corruption and violence in the North Caucasus and was.highly critical of the Kremlin.
Her murder in her central Moscow apartment building garnered global media on the dangers journalists face in Russia. The lack of convictions after her death caused many to believe that top Russian officials had given their blessings to her assassination.
