Moscow’s Military District Court has ruled the criminal actions against Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, an acquitted defendant in the case of a murdered journalist, were unjustified. Popovskikh is now to receive 2,135,000 rubles (about $75,000) in moral and material damages, Itar Tass reported Thursday.
Popovskikh was among six suspects charged with the murder of Moscow journalist Dmitry Kholodov. Kholodov, a reporter for the independent newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, was killed in October 1994 after investigating alleged corruption involving high-ranking military leaders, including then-Defence Minister Pavel Grachev.
The defendants were acquitted in separate trials in 2002 and 2004 in the Moscow Military District Court. The Military Collegium of Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the verdicts in March.
Popovskikh filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office in March, claiming unjustified criminal prosecution, and sought 3.5 million rubles (about $125,000) in moral and material damages. Popovskikh, twice acquitted by the Moscow Military District Court, spent more than four years in detention, from 1998, when he was arrested as a suspect, to 2002, when he was acquitted.
