MOSCOW, October 7 (Itar-Tass) — The main investigation department in the Investigation Committee found new accomplices involved in the murder case of a Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, spokesman of the Investigation Committee Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass on Friday.
“At the request of a group of detectives, who are investigating this criminal case, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov were already brought to Moscow from the penitentiary. Gaitukayev will be charged with Anna Politkovskaya’s murder over her office activities on Friday. The murder was committed by an organized group of hired criminals (Article 105 Part 2 b, zh, z). Under the same article a new charge will be issued against Khadzhikurbanov. Meanwhile, new charges will be also brought against Rustam Makhmudov, who was detained last spring in Chechnya, and Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudovs, who were put on recognisance not to leave the city. The detectives are planning to take investigation measures against the defendants,” Markin underlined.
He recalled that the former Lieut. Col. of police Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was earlier charged under the investigation of this murder case. “The detectives specified his role in masterminding and committing the crime. The detectives found that in July 2006 Lom-Ali Gaitukayev received a murder contract for remuneration against a Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. For the contract murder Gaitukayev formed a criminal group, which included Pavlyuchenkov, Gaitukayev’s cousins Makhmudovs and the former officer of the Moscow organized crime security department Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who was released from prison in September 2006,” Markin noted.
“The detectives found out that Pavlyuchenkov at the post of the chief of the 4th search control department of the Moscow main police department, which was in charge of outdoor surveillance, instructed his subordinates to trace down the journalist in order to find the routes and the time of her daily trips round the city. The information and the weapon of murder, which Pavlyuchenkov received, were passed to the contract killer Rustam Makhmudov and his accomplices, who were tracking Anna Politkovskaya several days before the murder,” Markin pointed out.
“The investigation into the criminal case continues. Investigation measures are being taken to find all accomplices in the crime and a murder contractor,” Markin remarked.
“The detectives also have the information about an expected murder contractor, but it is premature to make this information public,” he said earlier.
Anna Politkovskaya was killed five years ago on October 7, 2006, when parking the car near an apartment block in Lesnaya Street, she entered the elevator to lift to her flat. Five gunshots were made in the journalist. After that the killer went out from the apartment block, got in a VAZ 21043 car at the Novoslobodskaya railway station and escaped together with the accomplices in the crime.
This criminal case was already tried in the court. Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudovs, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov were charged in the murder case. In February 2009 the Moscow District Court Martial acquitted them on the verdict of jury, the Russian Supreme Court cancelled this verdict and passed the case for further investigation later. Khadzhikurbanov was sentenced to eight years in the extortion case.
After the acquittal verdict Politkovskaya’s son Ilya said that he found “all accused involved in the murder.” “The degree of their guilt should have been proved in the court. But the public prosecutor failed to do it,” he emphasized.
The detectives succeeded to achieve major results in the investigation of this high-profile murder that Politkovskaya’s colleagues admitted either. Rustam Makhmudov was detained in Achkhoi-Martan, Chechnya, on May 31, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was arrested in late August.
In reply to a question, whether the detectives will be able to find the murder contractor, Politkovskaya’s colleague, the Novaya Gazeta deputy chief editor Sergei Sokolov noted that “all depends from the murder masterminding scheme.” “I believe that the chain of mediators acted in the murder. All depends from how long this chain was,” he said.
Anna Politkovskaya worked as a special correspondent and a reporter in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper since June 1999. She became well-known thanks to her articles about the Chechen war and the book based on the real facts and titled “The trip in the hell. The Chechen diary.”