PRAGUE, February 25. /TASS/. The Prague City Council, the Czech capital’s supreme municipal body, resolved to name an alley not far from the Russian embassy after slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Prague City Mayor Zdenek Hrib has told reporters.

The alley is located in the northwestern district of Bubenec, which also houses the Russian embassy building.

"The decision to name an alley after Anna Politkovskaya was made simultaneously with the decision to rename the Pod Kastany [Under the Chestnuts] Square after [Russian opposition figure] Boris Nemtsov," the mayor said.

According to Hrib, the move is intended to express solidarity with the Russian opposition.

The official ceremony to rename the square after Nemtsov is scheduled to take place on February 27, on the fifth anniversary of the politician’s murder. A group of activists, including Czech political figures and journalists, opposes the move.

Nemtsov case

Boris Nemtsov, Russia’s former deputy prime minister under then-President Boris Yeltsin, co-chairman of the Parnas party and lawmaker from the Yaroslavl regional legislature, was gunned down in downtown Moscow on February 27, 2015. Five individuals were arrested on suspicion of murdering the politician: Zaur Dadayev, Anzor and Shadid Gubashev, Temirlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev. In July 2017, the convicted perpetrators received sentences ranging from 11 to 20 years in a maximum security penal colony.

Politkovskaya case

On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a columnist at the Novaya Gazeta daily, was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. The court found that in July 2006 Chechen native Lom-Ali Gaitukayev got a contract for killing Politkovskaya. He recruited a team of senior Interior Ministry officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, the Makhmudov brothers and former police officer Sergey Khadzhikurbanov, who was released from prison in September 2006.

Investigators found out that Pavlyuchenkov had ordered his subordinates to track Politkovskaya’s daily movements. Later, he handed over this information and a weapon to the perpetrator of the crime, Rustam Makhmudov and his accomplices. All detained defendants in the case have been sentenced by the Moscow City Court to lengthy prison terms. Pavlyuchenkov identified exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen militant leader Akhmed Zakayev as the masterminds of the murder.