MOSCOW, October 23 (Itar-Tass) — The Investigative Committee sent to the prosecutors the criminal case against former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, accused of abetting the murder of Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya, SK spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass.
"The criminal case materials against Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov were sent to prosecutor's office for endorsing the indictment," Markin said.
Pavlyuchenkov will be the first defendant to go on trial in the Politkovskaya murder case.
Earlier, he signed a plea bargain agreement, and provided important evidence in the case over the murder of Forbes Russia magazine editor-in-chief Paul Khlebnikov in Moscow in July 2004.
The special procedure implies that a court will hold a hearing without inquest, and that the penalty for the defendant cannot exceed two thirds of the maximum prison term.
He was charged under Article 105, part 2 and Article 222, Part 3 /"murder of person performing his service duties by a group of persons and under contract, and illegal turnover of weapons"/.
Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta observer, was killed in a stairwell of her apartment house in Lesnaya Street, central Moscow On October 7, 2006.
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 of making murder plans. 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.
Pavlyuchenkov, as head of surveillance unit, 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.
Gaitukayev was earlier sentenced to 12 years for an assassination attempt in Ukraine. The Politkovskaya case has already been reviewed by a court. Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, accused of betting the crime, were acquitted by the Moscow district military court on the strength of jurors' verdict. Later, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and sent the case for reinvestigation.
Rustam Makhmudov was detained in Achkhoi-Martan, Chechnya, on May 31, 2011. Dmitry Pavlyuchenko was arrested in late August 2011. In May 2011, a court changed his measure of restraint for house arrest.