Russian high profile murders: a modern Odyssey

Russian high profile murders are quite notorious. Their apparent insolvability too.

There is a classic pattern that seems to repeat itself over and over again, when analysing murder case involving Russian prominent and well-known personalities. The victim is usually a controversial individual able to split public opinion and the murder appears to be connected with his or her controversiaity. The murder usually seems to have the features of a contract killing, judging by the modalities and frequency of specific patterns. The cases are investigated with painful slowness and often come to a dead end. The contract murderer is quite likely to be identified, but the instigator remains unknown in most of the cases. The trials usually end up being a mere public display of the inefficiency of the system.

Anna Politkovskaya’s murder is probably the most famous case of high-profile murder in Russia, but there are many more that seem to corroborate the thesis above.

The murder of Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov is probably one of the most interesting cautionary tales concerning the rotten mechanisms regulating the Russian justice and security system. Klebnikov was shot from a slowly moving car and bled to death in Moscow in 2004. Since then a real odyssey started for those who were interested in finding the truth about his death. Two main suspects were stopped and detained in Minsk, Belarus, for more than three months, allegedly due to delays by the Russian authorities to provide the Belarus counterpart with the necessary paperwork for extradition. A first indictment was sent by prosecutors to court in November 2005. Of the various people indicted, only 3 were arrested, while the others were still wanted by the police. The trial, that started in January 2006 in closed session (apparently because of some case-related documents disclosing secret surveillance methods used by law enforcement), had to be restarted when the judge fell ill and had to be replaced. In May 2006 the trial ended with the acquittal of all the people accused. The Supreme Court consequently overturned the acquittal of three of the suspects, and ordered a new trial. The new trial failed to take place twice, due to the disappearance of one of the suspect.

In many cases, moreover, there is not even a suspect. Alexandr Slesarev, co-owner of Sodbusinessbank, was killed in 2005 and the responsible were never found. The murderer of Vladislav Listyev, popular journalist and head of the ORT TV Channel, is still unknown. He was killed in 1995 and the deadline set by the Statute of Limitations for the proceedings to start runs out in the current year. Investigations seem to be stuck at a dead end and  have been suspended in April 2009.

Anna Politkovskaya’s case is sadly quite likely to follow the same pattern. She was killed in October 2006 and various members of a Chechen organized crime group and former FSB agents were suspected. Little by little the list of suspects required to stand for trial was reduced to three names (Sergey Khadzhikurbanov, Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Ibragim Makhmudov), while the person suspected to have shot the victim, Rustam Makhmudov, is allegedly hiding in Western Europe . In 2009 the suspects were all acquitted for lack of evidence. The Supreme Court consequently overturned the judgement and ordered a new trial. Nevertheless, further investigations have not brought in any new elements.

All this cases reveal a certain level of inefficiency in the way the investigations are carried out. A frustrating slowness and tendency to secrecy that characterise most of the cases are drawbacks that decrease the chances for their resolution. In too many cases, moreover, the inefficiency shown by the investigative authorities has to be summed up with the inefficiencies of the justice system. The entire apparatus is contaminated by the bad practices of the past, corruption and bureaucratic sclerosis, and the hopes for an improvement of situation have to be looked at with a fair dose of impartiality and realism. Despite the fact that the president of the Russian Federation might condemn high-profile murders and urge those involved in the investigations to do more to solve the cases, in spite of the promises for a better functioning legislation, it is going to take a long time to eradicate from the system the evils that badly affect it. And it is going to take a long time before those responsible for the many Russian high profile murders are found and punished.

Cineri gloria sera venit