Russian and Belgian police are currently searching in the Belgian city of Liège for a man suspecting of being the hitman in the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow in October 2006. This was confirmed during the weekend by Belgian officials, who – like their Russian counterparts – did not name him. He is also reportedly being sought in his own region in Russia.
Sources close to the case said the man is almost certainly Rustam Makhmudov, who has been wanted as a suspect since 2008 and who is the brother of two men who were acquitted as accomplices in 2009. After prosecutors appealed against the acquittal, the supreme court ordered a retrial and then an additional investigation.
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) regarded the efforts to combat impunity for violence against journalists as one of the most urgent priorities for media freedom in Russia. The recent attacks on journalists and the unsolved murders clearly demonstrate the lack of political will and the lack of importance that the authorities attach to the lives of journalists, it said.
The press freedom organisation also deplored the fact that the Russian authorities are not keeping Politkovskaya’s family informed about developments in the case. Representatives of the family (Anna Stavitskaya photo) have complained of their difficulties in finding out what is happening.
It hope that the revelations about the search in Belgium is not just a piece of political PR in response to the Russian civil society protests and President Medvedev’s comments following the physical attack on Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin on November 6 and the attacks on Sergei Mikhailov of Saratovsky Reporters, Anatoly Adamchuk of Zhukovskiye Vesti and the activist Konstantin Fetisov.
