Putin pardons man convicted in journalist’s murder

In return for his Ukraine service, his lawyer says

President Vladimir Putin has pardoned one of the convicted organizers of the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in return for his service in Ukraine, his lawyer said Tuesday, the latest in a series of such reprieves for high-profile criminals in Russia.

Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former law enforcement officer who was sentenced in 2014 to 20 years in prison over the killing of Politkovskaya in 2006, was pardoned in a decree issued by Putin, his lawyer, Alexei Mikhalchik, said in a phone interview.

Politkovskaya, who became one of Russia’s most acclaimed journalists as a result of her uncompromising reports of human rights abuses during the country’s wars in Chechnya that erupted in the 1990s, was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in central Moscow. Her murder caused shock waves in Russia and abroad, as it highlighted the growing dangers of reporting in the country that is critical of the Kremlin.

The news of Khadzhikurbanov’s pardon was first reported by Baza, a Russian news outlet, and RBC, a Russian business daily. Mikhalchik said he did not know when the decree had been signed.

Activists said this year that the Russian government had started a mass campaign to pardon convicts in return for fighting in Ukraine. Its military has relied heavily on recruiting inmates to fill its ranks, allowing Putin to avoid the politically unpopular step of imposing a new draft.

The pardon of Khadzhikurbanov follows a series of similar decisions by Russia that highlights how the Kremlin is willing to release convicted criminals, including murderers and rapists, as long as they help the war effort in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday defended the practice. “They are atoning with blood in storm brigades, under bullets and under shells,” he told reporters, referring to the criminals.

Last week, Alyona Popova, a Russian rights activist who has been studying similar cases, reported that Vladislav Kanyus, who had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for murdering Vera Pekhteleva, his former girlfriend, was pardoned in April because of his military service in Ukraine.

During his trial, witnesses testified that Kanyus had spent hours beating Pekhteleva in an apartment building, causing dozens of injuries, before strangling her. More than a dozen other pardons for violent criminals in return for service in Ukraine have been reported across Russia.

Politkovskaya’s children and Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper that she worked for, published a statement in which they condemned Khadzhikurbanov’s pardon, calling it a “monstrous” act of injustice and “a desecration of the memory of a person who was killed for her convictions.” The investigation of Politkovskaya’s murder took years to complete and was marred by conflicting testimonies and retrials.

Apart from Khadzhikurbanov, four other men were found guilty of organizing and executing the murder, receiving sentences from 12 years to life in prison. But the question of who ordered the killing remains unsolved. In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that despite convicting “a group of men who had directly carried out the contract killing,” the Russian state had “failed to take adequate investigatory steps to find the person or persons who had commissioned the murder.”

Khadzhikurbanov was acquitted by a jury in 2009, but he was convicted and sentenced after a second trial. Mikhalchik, his lawyer, welcomed the news of the pardon because he said he believed that his client was innocent.

“A juridical mistake has been righted,” Mikhalchik said in a phone interview.

Khadzhikurbanov’s experience in special police units helped him during his service, Mikhalchik said. After serving out the first contract signed in prison, Khadzhikurbanov signed another one as a volunteer, his lawyer said, adding that his client was most likely currently engaged in fighting on the front line and therefore could not be contacted.

HIGH-PROFILE CASE

Sergei Khadzhikurbanov was sentenced over the killing of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.