5 convicted of murdering Putin critic
MOSCOW — A Moscow jury convicted five men Thursday in the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on a bridge near the Kremlin two years ago, ending a nine-month trial that his supporters said had failed to bring the true masterminds of slaying to justice.
The brazen killing so close to Red Square sent shock waves through the Russian opposition, which had looked to Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, as a rare figure in a position to negotiate with authorities.
After two days of deliberations the jury at a Moscow court on Thursday found the suspected triggerman Zaur Dadayev, a former officer in the security forces of Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov, guilty of murdering Nemtsov. Four other men were convicted of involvement in the killing.
Prosecutors said the four men were accomplices who helped obtain the murder weapons and transported the shooter to the crime scene. Investigators said they never established who ordered the politician’s assassination.
Prosecutors are expected to announce the sentences they are seeking at a hearing next week.
Nemtsov, a top political opponent of President Vladimir Putin, was shot late at night on Feb. 27, 2015 as he was walking across the bridge just outside the Kremlin. The images of his dead body lying on the sidewalk with the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral towering behind sent a chilling message to many in the opposition, who had faced persecution and arrests, just how precarious their position was.
Ilya Yashin, Nemtsov’s close ally, echoed that sentiment, speaking to reporters after the verdict was delivered on Thursday:
“Political murders in Russia will continue if the masterminds of this attack are able to get away with this.”
The site on the Bolshoy Moskovetsky Bridge where Nemtsov was killed has become a shrine, with candles, fresh flowers and framed photos of the politician set on the sidewalk where he fell.
Following Putin’s call for a full probe, investigators quickly tracked down several people linked to the killing, all of them from Chechnya. The suspected triggerman was an officer in Kadyrov’s much-feared security force, and his suspected liaison, another senior officer in the Chechen police, was a relative of some of Kadyrov’s top lieutenants.
Despite the mounting pressure to investigate Kadyrov’s role in the killing, Putin stood by him and the investigation has fizzled. Key suspects have disappeared and reportedly have been whisked abroad, and the investigators have failed to name the organizers.