The BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes reports on the recent murders of a journalist and a human rights lawyer in Moscow. The Russian government denies the killings had anything to do with politics. But others suspect otherwise.
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MARCO WERMAN: Russia is rejecting criticism of its human rights record. Today, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a visiting European Union official that Europe should focus on investigating its own human rights problems. This, after the EU leader raised concerns about the recent murders of a journalist and a human rights lawyer in Moscow. The Russian government says the killings had nothing to do with politics, but as the BBC's Moscow correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports, that's not a unanimous opinion in Russia.
RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES: January 19th, 2009, Central Moscow. As the snow falls, a group of policemen casually mill around a body splayed out in a pool of blood on the pavement. The dead man is Stanislav Markelov, a 34-year-old human rights lawyer. He's been shot in the head at close range by a masked gunman. Along with him, a young journalist, Anastasia Barburova, has also been killed. This is the spot where Anastasia and Stanislav were shot in broad daylight, on a bustling Moscow street. This spot is less than a kilometer from the Kremlin. I can see the spires of the Kremlin cathedrals from here. They both worked for Novaya Gazeta, one of the last independent critical newspapers left in Moscow. It's highly critical of the Kremlin and of the government of Vladimir Putin. In the last few years, four of Novaya Gazeta's journalists have been killed. In an old, restored mansion close to the Moscow River, I've come to meet Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire businessman who owns Novaya Gazeta and now The London Evening Standard. Mr. Lebedev is an anomaly – hugely wealthy but also highly critical of the way Russia is run. He says those who ordered the killings of Anastasia and Stanislav are powerful figures who are threatened by his paper.
ALEXANDER LEBEDEV: The newspaper, for more than a year and a half, was assigned to one huge investigation all over the world, with some outside newspapers helping us, and that is dedicated to the life of certain Russian commercial, let's say bureaucracy, who in our view, have pocketed hundreds of billions of US dollars in the recent four years out of the people of this country's pockets.
WINGFIELD-HAYES: So the implication of what you're saying is that the reason why your journalists are being killed is because the stories and the investigations that are being done about the people in the regime close to the government. That is the implication of what you are saying?
LEBEDEV: Yes. Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. You will definitely will face risk to your life if you are really interfering with them on a serious level. Yeah, of course.
WINGFIELD-HAYES: The Russian government says the cases of Anastasia and Stanislav are being investigated, that those responsible will be caught. Others are much less sure. In a forest outside Moscow, I've come to meet a man who used to be a Russian state investigator. The meeting is furtive – he doesn't want to be seen with a foreign journalist. It's not surprising, given what he has to say.
ANONYMOUS INVESTIGATOR: There are certain cases where the order comes down from above not to investigate. The reason is if such cases were fully investigated, then the whole chain would be revealed, going all the way back up to higher levels to those people who might have ordered the killing.
WINGFIELD-HAYES: That is exactly what many people say has happened in another high-profile murder case. In this tiny Moscow courtroom, three men are on trial for killing of journalist and writer Anna Polikovskaya. But none of them is accused of being her killer; if anything, they are low accomplices. Two years after her death, Anna's killer and those who hired him have never been found and probably never will. A few days after she was killed, a couple of hundred people turned out at the funeral home in Moscow to say goodbye to Anastasia Barburova. Her father spoke passionately of his daughter's dream to be a journalist. She was one of the
dwindling number in Russia still willing and brave enough to stand up for what they believe in. She paid for it with her life.
WERMAN: The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, reporting from Moscow.
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