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Russian convicted over journalist Anna Politkovskaya\u2019s murder pardoned | Freedom of the Press News<\/p>\n
Former police officer had been serving a 20-year sentence over his role in the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A man convicted for his role in the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been pardoned after fighting in Ukraine, according to his lawyer and local media reports.<\/p>\n Politkovskaya, who was well known for reporting on abuses in Russia\u2019s war in Chechnya early in Vladimir Putin\u2019s presidency, was shot dead outside her flat in Moscow in 2006.<\/p>\n The killing triggered an outcry in the West and underlined the growing dangers of reporting in Russia as Putin gradually clamped down on independent media.<\/p>\n Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014 for organising the killing.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a special forces fighter, [Khadzhikurbanov] was invited to sign a contract to participate in the special military operation\u2026 When the contract expired, he was pardoned by presidential decree,\u201d Khadzhikurbanov\u2019s lawyer Alexei Mikhalchik told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n Khadzhikurbanov was convicted along with four other men from Chechnya, a mostly Muslim region in the northern Caucasus where Russia and its local allies crushed two rebellions, in 1994-96 and, under Putin, in 1999-2009.<\/p>\n In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found that, while the authorities had found and convicted a group of men who had directly carried out the contract killing, they had \u201cfailed to take adequate investigatory steps to find the person or persons who had commissioned the murder\u201d.<\/p>\n Politkovskaya, who did much of her work for the independent investigative magazine Novaya Gazeta, now banned in Russia, won more than a dozen international prizes for reporting on abuses committed in Chechnya by Russian and allied forces as well as by rebels, despite repeated detentions and death threats.<\/p>\n Many Russian prisoners have been sent to fight in Ukraine since Moscow launched its offensive last February, with critics warning some have committed new crimes after returning from the front.<\/p>\n The Kremlin last week acknowledged the use of prisoner recruits to fight in Ukraine and said convicts who \u201catone for their crime on the battlefield with blood\u201d could be pardoned.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are atoning with blood in storm brigades, under bullets and under shells,\u201d Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.<\/p>\n Russia has probably recruited 100,000 people from prisons to fight in Ukraine, Olga Romanova, the head of an independent prisoners\u2019 rights group has estimated.<\/p>\n Local Russian media outlets have reported several instances of released prisoners going on to commit serious offences, including murders, after having left the army.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u062f\u0631<\/a>Prisoner recruits<\/h2>\n
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