Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  Today it is three years since Mama was murdered. And how the investigation has unfolded from the beginning, forgive me for such words, but it has messed up our brains: “now [they say] everything is going quickly, you are great, helping us, things are going well, fast, soon everything will be fine, we will catch everyone.” … And they have no one.… If there had been the political will, then the mistakes the investigators made would not have happened. What can be said when we open one of the volumes of the criminal case and look at a page, and it turns out they have incorrectly reported the time that it took to carry out the murder—from the moment the killer arrived to the moment the killer left?37

  What was becoming increasingly clear was that the Russian government did not want to solve the case, but rather intended to drag it out for so long that the public would lose interest.

  Amazingly, Rustam Makhmudov, accused of firing the shots at Politkovskaya, suddenly materialized. (One wonders whether he had been in FSB hands all along.) He was reported to have been arrested in March 2011. Then came the arrests of two others: retired MVD officer Dmitrii Pavliuchenkov in August 2011 and Chechen Lom-Ali Gaitukaev in October. (Both were also implicated in the Klebnikov murder.) Pavliuchenkov admitted his guilt, was tried separately, and in December 2012 was sentenced to eleven years in prison. The case of the remaining five defendants went to trial in June 2013. There was a series of delays, centered around problems with the jury, several of whom recused themselves or were dismissed for various reasons. It was not until May 2014, seven and a half years after the killing of Politkovskaya, that a jury found all five defendants guilty. They were sentenced in June 2014 to between twelve years and life imprisonment.38

  The prosecution’s final story was thus: Gaitukaev, a boss in the Chechen criminal underworld, had organized the killing and enlisted his three nephews, the Makhmudov brothers, to do the job. Pavliuchenkov had provided the murder weapon and hired two other persons (who were not charged) to tail Politkovskaya. All the defendants in the final trial refused to admit guilt and said that Pavliuchenkov was lying, that he had organized the entire murder himself without their participation. The lawyer for defendant Rustam Makhmudov insisted that his client was not guilty of pulling the trigger, pointing out that there was no resemblance between him and the person who appeared in the video camera in the stairwell of Politkovskaya’s apartment. Further details of the trial were not made public.39

  Most of those who followed the case closely, including Politkovskaya’s family and her former Novaia gazeta colleagues, agreed that the five who were charged and sentenced had indeed committed the murder. But there was no established motive, aside from money and what prosecutors claimed, unconvincingly, was indignation over Politkovskaya’s writings. Then there was the fact that Politkovskaya had not only been under surveillance by the killers, but also by the MVD and FSB, for a time before she was murdered. Several employees of the police and security services had been rounded up in the initial investigation of the crime, but were released.40

  Search for the Zakazchik

  Nine years after the murder, in October 2015, Radio Svoboda interviewed some of those who were closely involved in the case. The story was the same. Justice would not come until the person who ordered the crime was identified. As several observers have pointed out, Pavliuchenkov, Gaitukaev, and Khadzhikurbanov, as the intermediaries between the actual killers and the mastermind probably, were keeping quiet in the hopes that they would get reduced sentences. In the words of human-rights activist Lev Ponomarev: “I think that the zakazchik is very close to those in power, and under this political regime it will not be possible to ascertain who he is. A person risks his life when he names the zakazchik.”41

  Ilya Politkovskii had said initially that he did not think the Kremlin ordered his mother’s murder. But his sister, Vera, thought differently. Interviewed in October 2012, she said pointedly: “In my subjective opinion, the person who ordered the murder will not be revealed until there is a change of regime in Russia.”42 Her brother eventually came around to share this view, telling an interviewer in early 2016 that he had information from high-level sources that people in the ruling elite knew who had ordered the crime but would not reveal the information to investigators: “I would suggest that those who know the name of the person who ordered the murder of Mama are simply withholding the information until a convenient time in the future.”43 Politkovskii believes that all this is part of how members of the leadership use kompromat (compromising material) against each other to maintain their positions.

  As for the theory that Boris Berezovsky had ordered his mother’s murder, Politkovskii insisted that there was absolutely no evidence of Berezovsky’s involvement and that he was being used by prosecutors as a “whipping boy.” (Indeed, the notion that Berezovsky, who shared Politkovskaya’s passionately critical views of Putin, would have wanted her dead is absurd.) Politkovskii said that Russian authorities had put pressure on him and his sister to endorse the claims about Berezovsky so that he could be extradited back to Russia. Asked about his reaction to the February 2015 murder of Boris Nemtsov, Politkovskii said that he and his sister were horrified by the similarities between that killing and his mother’s murder—as if there were a kind of blueprint for committing such crimes.44

  Kadyrov Lurking in the Background

  One of the obvious similarities between the Politkovskaya and Nemtsov cases was the fact that Chechens were charged with the crime in both instances. In this regard, there was speculation about the involvement of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who Politkovskaya had interviewed in June 2004. Politkovskaya’s face-to-face meeting with Kadyrov did not go well. He ended up losing his temper and accusing her of being an enemy of Chechnya. She later recalled: “I couldn’t bear it anymore. I stood up and walked away. My tears choked me. Of course I expected a bullet in my back.” As a result of this encounter, Politkovskaya wrote about Kadyrov: “A little dragon has been raised by the Kremlin. Now they need to feed it. Otherwise it will spit fire.”45

  Before her death, as said, Politkovskaya had been reporting on the human-rights abuses committed by Kadyrov’s notoriously brutal militia, the so-called Kadyrovtsy. She had interviewed many eyewitnesses to their crimes. Two days before she was killed, Politkovskaya spoke on Radio Liberty about her investigation of Kadyrov, whose birthday happened to be that day: “Personally, I have only one dream for Kadyrov’s birthday: I dream of him someday sitting in the dock, in a trial that meets the strictest legal standards, with all of his crimes listed and investigated.”46 Kadyrov will come up again in this narrative, because he is a central figure in several of the contract killings described here. But would Kadyrov, though firmly entrenched in power in Chechnya, not take his orders from the Kremlin when it comes to retribution against high-profile critics of Putin?

  Lawyers for the Politkovskaya family were unhappy that investigators never called Kadyrov for questioning, given that he had a strong motive for wanting Politkovskaya dead and that there had been speculation about his involvement in other murders. Asked by a journalist about Kadyrov, the main investigator in the Politkovskaya case had this to say:

  It is not possible to effectively interrogate a person on the basis of only rumors and speculation. The investigator must have some sort of evidence against the suspect.… If there is not such evidence, then the interrogation is based simply on nothing.… Moreover, the death of Anna Politkovskaya was not advantageous for Ramzan Kadyrov. In the summer and fall of 2006 he was preparing to occupy the position of president of Chechnya, and the resonant murder, with the victim a journalist who was critical of him, brought him more harm than good.47

  This of course was the same skewed reasoning voiced by Putin when asked about the Politkovskaya murder three days after it occurred. He claimed that Politkovskaya had only a negligible influence in Russia and that her murder did much more damage to those in power in Russia and Chechnya than her reporting had. (Kadyrov was even blunter, saying “if she had bothered
us, we would have done it long ago.”) Putin of course was overlooking the fact that Politkovskaya had gained a worldwide reputation. Between 2001 and 2006, Politkovskaya received fourteen prestigious international awards for her journalism.48 And whatever Politkovskaya’s readership within Russia, she doubtless managed to strike a chord within the Kremlin. Anna’s colleague Sergei Sokolov explained why she was viewed as such a threat by the ruling elite: “Anna Stepanovna in this case was not killed because she wrote a specific article, but because in total she represented a danger to the existing state structure, which is tied to violence and corruption.… She was killed as a public figure, as a journalist, having her own views on what was happening in Russia.”49

  Just a few weeks before her murder, Politkovskaya was in London, where she often visited, and met with the group of Russians and Chechens in exile who surrounded Boris Berezovsky, including Alexander Litvinenko. According to Alex Goldfarb, they were all concerned about Politkovskaya’s safety. Goldfarb had coffee with the journalist on this final visit to London and tried to persuade her not to return to Russia. But she dismissed his warnings: “It would be so easy to kill me during my trips to Chechnya, so the fact that it has not happened means that no one needs to do it.”50 Litvinenko also urged Politkovskaya to leave Russia and suggested that she live in the United States, where she had citizenship. But Politkovskaya insisted that she had a mission to help people in Russia whose rights were being violated. And also, of course, she wanted to be there for the birth of her granddaughter, who, as it turned out, she would never see. The baby would be named Anna.

  Litvinenko at a televised press conference exposing the crimes of the FSB, 1998.

  (Photograph courtesy of REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo)

  7

  THE LITVINENKO STORY

  There are three ways of influencing a person: blackmail, vodka, or the threat of murder.

  Vladimir Putin, as quoted in Sovershenno Sekretno, February 1, 2000

  According to Alexander Litvinenko’s wife, Marina, and also his friend Alex Goldfarb, Politkovskaya’s murder shook up the London group of exiles badly. As with the killing of Iushenkov, there was a real sense of personal loss, for Litvinenko in particular. In Marina’s words, “He was just broken down because for him it was absolutely devastating news.”1 Litvinenko and Politkovskaya shared a deep concern for the Chechen cause and an intense hatred of Putin. Also, as Goldfarb observed, the two had a special sympathy for each other because they both had similar attitudes about the risks they faced: “This was not a false sense of security, like what [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky had, but a professional skill at suppressing emotions of fear in the face of reality. They urged each other to be cautious and both joked in response.”2 After Politkovskaya’s death, Litvinenko had a clear sense of immediate danger. He told Daniel Quirke, an employee of a British consulting firm he did contract work for, that he would be next: “He was worried about himself, that there might be a list, or he might be on it.”3

  Litvinenko gave an impassioned speech at the Frontline Club in London shortly after Politkovskaya’s murder, insisting that no one would kill someone of Politkovskaya’s stature without the sanction of Putin.4 In a little over a month’s time, he would also be brutally murdered, the victim of poisoning by a lethal and rare substance, polonium 210. As evidence would later show, Litvinenko, a former officer of the FSB exiled in London, had been a marked man in the Kremlin’s eyes for several years. Why did the Kremlin want him dead so badly, badly enough to create an international scandal of unprecedented proportions?

  Many of the answers have emerged from the British Inquiry into the Litvinenko case. Thanks to the persistent efforts of Marina Litvinenko and her solicitors, the British Home Office finally consented, on July 22, 2014, to open the Inquiry. It had been a long process. After Litvinenko’s death on November 23, 2006, more than two hundred British police officers were assigned to the investigation of the crime. They visited over sixty premises, including hotels, bars, restaurants, homes, airplanes, and hospitals; interviewed hundreds of witnesses; and asked for reciprocal legal assistance from more than fifteen countries. An inquest into Litvinenko’s death was begun on November 30, 2006, but it was adjourned pending the completion of the criminal investigation.

  Although the inquest was resumed in October 2011, its scope was constrained for a number of technical reasons, including that it could not accept classified government information as evidence. Sir Robert Owen, who was appointed to lead the inquest in 2012, thus submitted a request to the British Home Office to establish a formal public Inquiry, which would allow the court to consider secret evidence separately, in closed session. The Inquiry hearings began in January 2015 and lasted, with interruptions, until July of the same year. Sir Robert’s much-anticipated report on the Litvinenko Inquiry was released in January 2016. Both The Owen Report and the transcripts and evidence from the hearings, cited extensively here, provide an in-depth picture of Litvinenko and the circumstances of his murder, the first major hit outside of Russia.5

  Sasha Litvinenko: A Portrait

  Born in 1962, Alexander Litvinenko (known as “Sasha” to family and friends) grew up in Nalchik, a small city in the North Caucasus. He was raised by his grandparents after his parents divorced when he was a baby. Litvinenko was not accepted to a university, so he joined the Soviet army in 1980 and served for a year in the Stavropol region of the North Caucasus. He then attended the S.M. Kirov Higher Military Red Banner Command School of the MVD Internal Troops in the city of Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz). The MVD internal troops, as noted, were a paramilitary force whose job was to preserve order within the country and quell disturbances in certain hot spots, as well as to guard important government facilities, including labor camps and nuclear installations. Litvinenko graduated from the school in 1985 after a four-year course of study, as a commissioned lieutenant. He then joined the elite Dzerzhinsky Special Mechanized Rifle Division of the Internal Troops, headquartered outside Moscow.6

  According to a Russian account, and to information from the Inquiry, Litvinenko graduated from military school with an excellent record—he was intelligent and disciplined, had a good command of small arms, and was a top athlete. Thus, in 1988, he was recruited from the Dzerzhinsky Division into the Special Departments (Osobye otdely, or OO) of the KGB and, after a year of training with the KGB in Siberia, returned to the Dzerzhinsky Division as an OO officer in a platoon that provided security for government shipments going abroad.7

  The Special Departments were part of the KGB’s Third Chief Directorate for counterintelligence within the military and internal troops. A key job of OO officers was to watch over members of their troop units to make sure they were obeying the rules and not doing or saying anything that was politically subversive. Not surprisingly, OO officers, who were authorized to monitor phone calls and correspondence and initiate criminal prosecutions, were not viewed kindly by their military colleagues and subordinates. Indeed, during the Soviet years, and particularly during World War II, the special departments gained notoriety for their ruthlessness in administering summary justice, including death, to soldiers suspected of disloyalty.8

  Litvinenko later explained to Goldfarb why he had chosen that line of work:

  Look, I was a young lieutenant. The security services had a powerful attraction. Something magnetic just in the secretiveness.… I only [in the nineties] started to realize for the first time how much people hated us for our history. After all, I was fighting against bandits and did not think about politics. And moreover, for every one person who considered us killers, there were two who considered us valiant defenders of the motherland.9

  This makes sense, if one understands how the Soviet/Russian system worked. Litvinenko was not from a family of privileged intellectuals or high-level government bureaucrats who had access to the Western press and may have questioned the Kremlin regime. He was raised as a patriot, like most of those in his generation, not as a dissident. As Goldfarb put it to me, “S
asha became a policeman, which in his view and that of many others was an honest profession.”10

  Litvinenko rose up in the security hierarchy, leaving the Osobye otdely to become an oper (operative) in the KGB division for economic security and organized crime in 1991. (The KGB would be disbanded later that year, and its counterintelligence agency would undergo several name changes, with its functions remaining largely the same.) In 1994, Litvinenko moved to the anti-terrorism division of FSK (a KGB successor organization that became the FSB in 1995). Anti-terrorist operations took Litvinenko back briefly to the North Caucasus, along the Chechen border with Russia, where the FSB was conducting a ruthless campaign to suppress Chechen separatists. Litvinenko was in the thick of things there, at one point even engaging in an operation to free Russian hostages. According to Marina Litvinenko, her husband returned home to Moscow from that particular venture shaken and ill. It took some time for him to recover. He was also beginning to question the role of Russian forces in Chechnya and their indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.11

  Marina and Sasha had met in Moscow in June 1993, while he was still married but estranged from his first wife and already had two children, Alexander and Sonia. Marina, a beautiful dance teacher who was the same age as Sasha and divorced, grew up in Moscow. They fell in love immediately. Their son, Anatoly, was born in June 1994, and they married the following October, after Sasha was divorced. In 2012 testimony for British investigators, Sasha’s son Alexander recalled: “Until 2000, before he went to London, father used to visit us—my mother, Sonia, and me—about once a week. Father loved me and Sonia very much and treated my mother with great respect, despite the fact that father lived with his new wife Marina at that time.” He added that he had some sort of a falling-out with Marina and that, after Sasha and Marina moved to London, he and his father stopped seeing each other. But his father continued to call him, sometimes talking for hours, and Sonia visited their father and Marina in London many times.12 Sasha was clearly a family man.