Nemtsov allies seek murder masterminds

A small group of volunteers arranges flowers at the makeshift shrine on a bridge just metres from the Kremlin where Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down a year ago.

"The city authorities come something like twice a month and destroy all this and clear everything away," physicist Mikhail Lashkevich, 50, a member of Nemtsov's former political movement, told AFP.

"It is important for me that the memory remains and that the people and the authorities understand that we haven't forgotten and won't forget."

While supporters of the charismatic former deputy prime minister struggle to maintain the memorial, those close to Nemtsov are also fighting another battle -- to try to find out why he was murdered and who was behind his shocking killing.

The assassination of Kremlin critic Nemtsov -- hit in the back by four fatal shots as he walked home with his girlfriend through the icy Moscow wind late last February 27 -- was the most high-profile political killing in Russia since former KGB agent President Vladimir Putin rose to power some 16 years ago.
After the Kremlin said the murder seemed like a deliberate "provocation", Putin took the investigation under his personal control and within a matter of weeks five men -- all Chechens from Russia's restive North Caucasus region -- were arrested and then charged with the murder.

One more suspect apparently blew himself up with a grenade as security agents tried to detain him, while another man named in December as an organiser is still at large.  

The five detainees -- including Zaur Dadayev, a member of a Chechen interior ministry battalion accused of being the gunman -- are now awaiting trial for what investigators say was a contract killing carefully planned over months for which they were promised some 15 million rubles ($200,000, 180,000 euros at current exchange rate).   

But although the head of Russia's Investigative Committee said last month that the case has been "solved", Nemtsov's family and allies insist the authorities have failed to get to the masterminds and point the finger of blame at Chechnya's Putin-loyal strongman Ramzan Kadyrov -- and even the Kremlin.

- Kadyrov's circle  -
On a recent afternoon the five suspects in the killing squeezed into a cramped cage in a stuffy Moscow courtroom and exchanged glances with tearful relatives over the heads of heavily armed police escorts as investigators succeeded in getting their detention extended.

All of the men insist they are innocent fall guys and say that any confessions they made were beaten out of them by Russian security officers.

"Torture anyone here and they would confess to whatever is dictated to them," Anzor Gubashev, one of the defendants pleaded with the judge.

"This is the justice system we have, these are the authorities. We are rags that can be used once and thrown away."

Vadim Prokhorov, once Nemtsov's lawyer and now representing his eldest daughter Zhanna, is currently trawling through the 65 volumes of evidence the investigators collected and said he is convinced that most of the men arrested were involved in the murder.

But he is also sure that high-ranking officials in the tight circle around Kadyrov -- who had a long-running feud with Nemtsov -- ordered the killing to stop Nemtsov's political work and that the Kremlin does not want the investigation to go further.

"It is an obvious lie to say that the murder has been solved," Prokhorov told AFP. "Those who ordered it and those who organised it have not been identified or caught".
So far only one man, low-ranking Chechen security official Ruslan Mukhudinov, has been named as an organiser but he remains at large.

Investigators have reportedly also tried to charge his boss -- Chechen interior ministry officer Ruslan Geremeyev, a close relative of Kadyrov's right-hand man -- but those attempts have been stifled.

Meanwhile, lawyer Prokhorov has filed a petition for police to quiz Kadyrov -- who has dismissed the accusations and publicly praised the alleged gunman Dadayev -- but that failed to make any progress.

"All the trails of the organisers and those who ordered the murder lead to Grozny," Prokhorov said.

"Putin clearly hasn't given the order and won't give the order to question Kadyrov."

- 'Situation getting worse' -

Denied access to the pro-Kremlin state media, Nemtsov had become a marginal figure in Russia but he remained a thorn in the side of the authorities.

At the time of his death he was probing Moscow's covert deployment of troops to Ukraine -- and ex-colleagues are convinced he was killed to halt his political work.

"As far as I am concerned, the motives for the murder were to stop his activity as one of the leaders of the opposition," Olga Shorina, Nemtsov's former personal assistant, told AFP.

In the wake of the murder, Zhanna Nemtsova accused Russia's state media of fuelling an atmosphere of hatred against all those who oppose Putin that allowed the killing to happen.

Now a year on, with little headway made into finding those behind Nemtsov's killing, Russia's beleaguered opposition feels as exposed as ever.

Recently Kadyrov posted pictures of Nemtsov's ally Mikhail Kasyanov in the sights of a sniper rifle and threatened to eradicate the "jackals" that challenge Putin.

"I think that the situation is getting even worse," Shorina said. "All opponents of the regime are being called enemies and criminals."
Source :AFP