Allies of slain Putin critic Nemtsov allege cover-up after guilty verdict. By Svetlana Reiter and Andrew Osborn
A court on Thursday
convicted five men of murdering Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, but
the late politician's allies said the investigation had been a cover-up and
that the people who had ordered his killing remained at large. Nemtsov, one of
President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics, was murdered in 2015 as he
walked across a bridge near the Kremlin after dining with his girlfriend. Aged
55, he had been working on a report examining Russia's role in Ukraine. His
killing sent a chill through opposition circles.
After more than eight
months of hearings, a jury trial convicted five ethnic Chechen men of his
murder, including the man prosecutors said pulled the trigger, Zaur Dadayev, a
former soldier in Chechnya. The four others had
acted as his accomplices, it said, and the group had been promised a bounty of
15 million rubles ($253,889.59) for the high-profile assassination, tailing
Nemtsov around Moscow before choosing their moment to strike.
Nemtsov's supporters
welcomed the verdict, but said Dadayev and the others were low-level
operatives. The case remained unsolved, they said, because those who had
ordered, financed and organized the hit had not been caught. "It's the biggest
crime of the century and yet they haven't identified the real organizers or
those who ordered it," Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for the late politician's
daughter, told reporters after the verdict.
"The Russian
government was not prepared to look into the entourage of (Chechen leader
Ramzan) Kadyrov," he said, despite his view that one of the masterminds
was a close associate of the Chechen strongman. Zhanna Nemtsova, the
slain politician's daughter, has repeatedly said she wanted Kadyrov, the
Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya who calls himself "Putin's foot
soldier", to be questioned about what he knew about the case. Kadyrov has
praised the trigger man Dadayev as a "true patriot of Russia." But Kadyrov, who has
denied allegations he was personally involved, never appeared before the court.
ROOTS 'GO STRAIGHT TO
THE TOP'
The Kremlin, just like
it did when journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in 2006, has downplayed
Nemtsov's significance, calling his killing a "provocation" designed
to cause problems for the Russian authorities… read more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nemtsov-idUSKBN19K1UIsee also
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