| Issue #33, November 10, 2006 |
COURT REVERSES ACQUITTAL IN MOSCOW MURDER
By Dan Rattiner
In July of 2004, Paul Klebnikov of Sagaponack was on his way home from a long day at the office in Moscow where he worked as editor of Forbes Magazine (Moscow) when a car pulled up, the window rolled down and somebody fired a gun that shot him dead.
The news of this event was received particularly hard here in the Hamptons because Paul was a member of a well-respected family living in this community, where they had been summering for nearly half a century. Paul, a journalist, left behind his wife, Musa, and three children, two brothers and a sister and his father and stepmother, and many, many friends. He was a marathon runner, ocean swimmer, with interests that varied, from philosophy and politics, to architecture and urban design. He was 41.
Paul’s death seems to have been caused because of his fearlessness and determination in reporting the news at his job in Russia. These were family traits. Members of his family exhibited this behavior in almost everything that they did.
Paul had recently taken the job at Forbes Magazine after writing numerous investigative articles about business corruption in post-Soviet Union Russia. There were high hopes about what he could accomplish at the magazine. He also had written a powerful book about one of the Chechen strongmen in that country — Khozh-Akmed Nukhayev. Many believed that Mr. Nukhayev arranged for the murder of Paul Klebnikov for prying into his business interests and that three of his henchmen had carried it out. Russia was then and still is a dangerous place for anyone to speak up.
Whether Mr. Nukahayev was involved in Klebnikov’s murder will probably never be known because the prosecutors and police in Russia live largely in fear of people such as he. However, the wheels of justice did turn and pretty soon the police picked up three small-time Chechen criminals, Kazbek Dukuzov, Musa Vakhayev and Fail Sadretdinov, and charged them with being the contract killers in this crime. There had been connections between these three and Mr. Nukhayev in other matters, but there was not enough evidence to establish a connection with this powerful figure in this particular case, so Nukhayev was not charged.
The trial took place in a Moscow courtroom in the spring of 2005, and after considering fairly meager evidence, a jury acquitted all three men of the charges. They were then released.
Now, however, there has been an interesting twist. Under old Russian law, apparently, an acquittal is not necessarily the end of the matter for the defendants as it is in America. There can be an appeal to the Russian Supreme Court. And so, last week that court threw out the conviction of the three accused and ordered that a new trial take place.
Incidentally, there are lawyers and judges in Russia who do not believe in this particular kind of right to appeal, and, in fact, they thought it had been stopped with the creation of a new criminal code in 2002 expanding the concept of juried criminal trials to the far corners of Russia. But this loophole remains, and those looking for answers to the Klebnikov killing pushed their way through it.
“The very idea of an appeal of a jury is absurd,” said an attorney for defendant Sadretdinov. “It is incompatible with the essence of a jury verdict, which is a decision of the people.”
Interestingly, aides to Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev have issued only faint denials that their boss might have been involved in this murder. It is in the nature of things in Russia to suggest that something like this might very well be so. Thus is fear and intimidation used in that country.
Here in America, the family of Paul Klebnikov was glad to learn that the acquittal had been overturned. They issued a statement.
“This is a hopeful sign for justice and the rule of law in Russia.”
Perhaps Russian justice will get to the bottom of this yet.
* * *
One month ago, another outspoken journalist, this time a Russian-born woman by the name of Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead gangland style as she was leaving her Moscow apartment. She was 48.
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