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Court to meet in camera to review defendant’s petition for house arrest

The court met the lawyer's petition to have the petition reviewed in camera for the sake of his client's safety

Photo ITAR-TASS

Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, May 31 (Itar-Tass) — Moscow's Basmanny court will meet behind closed doors to review the petition to change the measure of restraint for former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, a defendant in the case over the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, from custody to house arrest, due to serious chronic illnesses. The court met the lawyer's petition to have the petition reviewed in camera for the sake of his client's safety.

Lawyer Karen Nersesyan told the court the defendant had asked not to divulge the information about the place where Pavlyuchenko would stay under house arrest.

Earlier, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Tass that " in the course of the probe into the criminal case opened over the murder of Anna Politkovskya, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov and his lawyer Karen Nersesyan, lodged a petition requesting to change the measure of restraint from custody to house arrest due to serious chronic illnesses."

On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was killed in a stairwell of her apartment house in Lesnaya Street, central Moscow.

The murder was committed at around 16:00, Moscow time. The killer fired five shots at the journalist. He went out of the house, sat in a VAZ-21043 car waiting for him near the Novoslobodskaya subway station, and escaped together with his accomplices.

Chechnya native Lom-Ali Gaitukayev is suspected involvement in planning the murder. In July 2006, he took a contract from an unidentified person to murder Politkovskaya for remuneration. To this end, he set up a criminal group which comprised former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, Gaitukayev's nephews Makhmudovs and organized crime police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who was released from prison in September 2006.

Pavlyuchenkov, as unit head for surveillance at office # 4 at Moscow's operations/search department, ordered his subordinates to monitor the journalist to find out her daily routes in the city.

He later purchased weapons, worked out a plan, and assigned a role to each of his accomplices in preparing and perpetrating the murder.

The information obtained by Pavlyuchenkov and the weapon of murder were passed to perpetrator Rustam Makhmudov and his accomplices, who had been tailing Anna Politkovskaya several days before the crime, the investigators said.

Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, sentenced to 12 years for masterminding the assassination attempt on the life of a businessman in Ukraine, was convoyed from a penal colony to Moscow at the request of the investigator handling the Politkovskaya case.

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