Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  A team of researchers from Novaia gazeta, Memorial, and the International Federation for Human Rights decided to do its own investigation, with the help of Estemirova’s sister Svetlana, a lawyer. The team delved deeply into the case and was able to refute much of the official version in a report produced in September 2011.32

  First, Estemirova never met Bashaev or interviewed him. It was unclear why he would single her out to be killed for writing about him and the Shalazhi Jamaat, given that the reports, which she did in fact write, were unsigned and he could not have known that she was their author. The team noted that Estemirova’s notebook computer was missing from the murder site and that investigators had seized her work computer. Thus it would have been possible for them to identify her as the author of the reports from an analysis of the hard drives of these computers.

  As it turned out, the forensic results showed that the fragment of the silencer found at the crime scene did not match the gun silencer found in the vehicle belonging to Bashaev. And the bullets collected at the murder site had not been fired through the silencer that was discovered in the car. Furthermore, there was no physical evidence found in the vehicle—fingerprints, blood, hair or pieces of clothing—to link it to the crime. The team concluded:

  If we assume that it was indeed this VAZ-2017 vehicle that was used to kidnap Natalia Estemirova, then the logic of the criminals becomes somewhat confusing. Before abandoning the car, they must have tried to thoroughly destroy all of the evidence. However, for some reason, they left the vehicle’s government license plate in the trunk, allowing the car to be traced … to Bashaev. Meanwhile it would have been IMPOSSIBLE to completely eradicate all traces of the kidnapping from the car. The negative results from the forensic analysis allow us to come to what seems like an obvious conclusion: it is unlikely that the discovered vehicle was used in the kidnapping of Natalia Estemirova.33

  As to the fake identity card with Bashaev’s photograph pasted on it, found in a cache of weapons next to the gun used to kill Estemirova, the team concluded that, while the card was indeed forged, anyone, particularly the police, could have obtained Bashaev’s photograph and created a false I.D.

  The most important finding of the independent group concerned the issue of DNA evidence, and it proved to be dramatic. Russian investigators had collected DNA from several different sources, including the sweat on a comb found at Bashaev’s former home; sweat stains found on the blouse Estemirova had been wearing when she was murdered that were not hers; DNA from three individuals (two men and a woman) extracted from material found under Estemirova’s fingernails; and DNA obtained from exhumed remains of those allegedly killed in the above-mentioned November 2009 airstrike, who were said to include Bashaev.

  Members of the research team traveled to France, where Bashaev’s brother Anzor was living, and were able to obtain a sample of his DNA and have it analyzed by a forensic expert in Switzerland. The presumption was that Anzor Bashaev would have many of the same genetic markers as Alkhazur. They then took the results, along with the DNA profiles of possible killers from the case file, to an independent laboratory in Russia. They received an analysis from one of Russia’s most prominent geneticists, Professor Igor Kornienko.

  Kornienko found a complete lack of concurrence between the DNA profile of Anzor Bashaev and any of the DNA profiles found on other materials. This meant, according to the research team, that “neither the DNA extracted from the exhumed remains [of the victims of the airstrike by Kadyrov forces], nor the DNA obtained from traces of sweat on Natalia Estemirova’s blouse, nor the DNA obtained from the sweat on the comb, belong to the genotype of Alkhazur Bashaev.”34

  Interestingly, Russian authorities claimed to have found Bashaev’s passport, completely clean, with no traces of blood, among the fragments of the bodies that were strewn around after their special operation against the militants. It was displayed on Chechen television after the attack. But this is the only evidence that Bashaev was indeed killed, and it could easily have been manufactured. The research team concluded that in fact the vehicle that was blown up contained bodies of murdered residents from a local town, not Shalazhi, where Bashaev was from.

  As the team pointed out, the official investigation made no attempt to use comparative DNA analysis to determine the complicity in the crime of other individuals, particularly members of the security services and police. Among the potential suspects were members of the MVD from the Kurchaloi region, who had carried out the execution that Estemirova had reported on.

  In sum, the report concluded that evidence produced by investigators to prove Bashaev’s guilt “is more indicative of a very crude attempt to construct a version of the crime implicating the militants of Shalazhi Jamaat, and leading the criminal investigation down a false trail. Indeed, the criminal investigation is gladly following this trail, ignoring the findings of their own experts.… We demand that the administration of the Investigative Committee stop violating the standards of the Russian Criminal Code and the rights of the victim.”35

  While some might attribute the flawed results of the official investigation of Estemirova’s murder to incompetence, it seems clear that in fact there was a concerted effort to cover up the facts and that Bashaev was just a convenient person to pin the crime on. The evidence points to Kadyrov as the one who arranged the killing. But then we must go back to the same question: Would Kadyrov have done this on his own initiative, without the okay of Putin? Not likely, given that Estemirova was so prominent that even world leaders condemned the crime. As for Medvedev, he perhaps deplored the murder, but he was in no position to do anything about it.

  The U.S. “Reset” with Russia

  It is ironic that just a week before Estemirova was killed, President Obama visited Russia for the first time. It seemed like a successful trip. Obama and Medvedev, who had assumed the Russian presidency a year earlier, agreed to cuts in nuclear arms, and Obama indicated that he might compromise on the planned NATO missile shield in Eastern Europe, much to the dismay of the Czech and Polish governments. In a speech at Moscow’s New Economic School on the second day of his visit, Obama spoke of a fresh start in relations between the U.S. and Russia, calling for a “reset”: “America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia … on the fundamental issues that will shape this century, Americans and Russians share common interests that form a basis for co-operation.”36

  Obama met with Russian opposition leaders on that day, and sent a U.S. delegation to a memorial service for Paul Klebnikov. Speaking on Obama’s behalf at the service, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, William J. Burns, said: “After five long years, we urge the Russian authorities to redouble their efforts to bring justice to those responsible.”37 Obama also attended a conference on civil society (Medvedev declined to go) and spoke about the importance of press freedom and the rule of law. But, as The New York Times observed, “His comments throughout the day were calculated to recognize Russian resentment of American scolding. ‘I come before you with some humility,’ he said. ‘I think in the past there’s been a tendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen.’”38

  Whatever motivated Obama’s policy of reset with Russia, it was doomed to fail. As Russia expert Mikhail Zygar explained: “Although the Obama administration was ready to renounce the role of global policeman and other excesses of the Bush era, it still harbored familiar old American prejudices against Russia. Medvedev, for his part, was never powerful enough to oversee a reset. And although Putin wanted a new relationship with the West, it was not the one Obama had in mind.”39

  The Obama administration placed its hopes for improved relations with Russia on Medvedev. But the White House failed to understand that Medvedev was a figurehead who was subservient to Prime Minister Putin because Putin still controlled the security services. Medvedev portrayed himself as a “liberal” and there was much talk in Russia and the West about a clique that had formed around him composed of men who genuinely favored democr
atic reform. As it turned out, this was a farce. From the very moment that Medvedev took office in 2008, it was predestined that Putin would return to the presidency four years later. (According to the Russian Constitution, Putin could not serve more than two terms consecutively.) In fact, Putin and Medvedev later revealed that it had been their plan all along to have Putin take back the presidency after Medvedev’s term ended. Moreover, the Kremlin changed the Constitution to extend the length of a presidential term from four to six years, which means that Putin can now run again in 2018, and remain the Russian president until 2024.

  In the words of one commentator, “The ‘reset’ was primarily built around the good personal relationship between Obama and Medvedev, and thus when Putin re-assumed the office of Russian president, the main building block of the policy was shattered. Perhaps the Obama administration was too short-sighted or idealistic and placed a clearly risky bet on Medvedev while framing policy.”40 Back in office as Russian president in 2012, Putin not only showed little interest in cooperating with the U.S. and its Russian partners on key global issues, he also initiated a new crackdown at home.

  Although Obama and his foreign policy team “talked the talk” about human rights in Russia, they were not able to have significant influence on the Kremlin. Testifying in July 2011 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ariel Cohen, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, observed: “There is good reason to believe … that Russian leaders do not take White House efforts to promote freedom and human rights seriously. They know that the U.S. administration is chained to the ‘reset’ and will do little more than verbally object to the Kremlin’s abuses of human rights and the rule of law. The talk of democracy is ‘for domestic [U.S.] consumption,’ said one official Russian visitor to Washington last fall.”41

  Obama’s failure to press the issue of human rights as he reached out to the Kremlin caused dismay among democratic activists and journalists in Russia, as well as among human-rights groups in the West. Of course, it is highly likely that, even if Obama had been more forceful in condemning the violence against Kremlin critics and the increasing crackdown on press freedoms and civil liberties, it would not have affected the Kremlin’s behavior in any significant way. But at the very least he would have offered moral support to those who had the courage to oppose Putin’s domestic policies and sent a message to Russia that its human-rights abuses were not going unnoticed in the West.

  Nowhere were those abuses more horrifyingly evident than in Chechnya. As Tanya Lokshina pointed out, Putin and his entourage were directly responsible for Chechen President Kadyrov’s brutalities, including the killing of Estemirova. In the first years of Kadyrov’s rule, he and his men had kept rebel insurgencies under control, but the repressiveness of the Kadyrov regime gave little hope to young men in Chechnya who increasingly, out of desperation, “went into the forest.” There had been a new rise of insurgency after 2008, and the Kadyrovites responded with escalating violence. Anyone suspected of even the slightest sympathy for the rebels was subjected to extreme reprisals. A virtual reign of terror began in Chechnya, which Estemirova bravely documented, while the Kremlin continued to give Kadyrov free rein.42 And Washington turned a blind eye.

  In July 2012, Human Rights Watch urged Russia’s international partners to call Russian authorities to task: “European Union member states and the U.S. should speak with one voice, calling for justice for Estemirova and an end of the entrenched impunity for killings and attacks on human-rights defenders in Chechnya and the broader region.”43 But the official investigation of Estemirova’s murder went nowhere, while the human-rights situation in Chechnya continued to deteriorate. After Estemirova’s murder, Memorial closed its offices in Chechnya and Novaia gazeta stopped sending journalists there, deeming it too dangerous. But some months later, civic activists from several organizations created a Joint Mobile Group, which started sending rotating teams of lawyers to Chechnya to give legal assistance to victims of abuse by local law-enforcement and security agencies. Members of the Mobile Group were harassed and threatened repeatedly in attempts to get them to cease their work.

  In March 2016, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe intervened on behalf of the relatives of Estemirova, who had filed a complaint in September 2011 in the European Court of Human Rights against the Russian government over its handling of her case. The commissioner observed that the murder of Estemirova should be seen against the backdrop of the broader pattern of violations of human rights in Chechnya and the Russian government’s failure to react appropriately.44 In July 2016, activists from Amnesty International and Memorial gathered outside the building of the Russian Investigative Committee in Moscow with placards marking the anniversary of Estemirova’s death. They told reporters that they were demanding a resumption of the investigation, and they wanted Ramzan Kadyrov to be questioned. A female passerby came up to one of the demonstrators and asked: “I know nothing about her [Estemirova]. Did they kill her just like they killed Anna Politkovskaya?” Upon hearing the answer, the woman responded: “This is politics, and no one should get involved! We cannot obtain justice. But now I must look her up on the Internet.”45 This reaction is probably typical. Even if members of the general population recognize that critics of the regime are singled out far death, they often accept this as inevitable. But with every such crime, their eyes are slowly opening.

  Vladimir Putin.

  (Photograph courtesy of Dmitri Astakhov/AFP/Getty Images)

  10

  BORIS BEREZOVSKY: SUICIDE OR MURDER?

  The relationship between Putin and Berezovsky is beginning to resemble that of Stalin and Trotsky. This affair risks ending up with Berezovsky getting a bullet in the head.

  Russian political commentator Andrei Pointkovsky, November 2000

  Vladimir Putin’s third stint as Russia’s president got off to a rocky start, with nationwide protests challenging the legitimacy of the March 2012 presidential vote. In fact, popular opposition to Putin had been mounting since the December 2011 parliamentary elections, which brought a victory for Putin’s United Russia party. After election observers claimed that there had been widespread ballot-stuffing and other forms of fraud, tens of thousands took to the streets in Moscow and other cities. (Putin blamed the December events on Hillary Clinton, who as U.S. Secretary of State had voiced criticism of the elections.) Protests broke out anew at the time of Putin’s May 2012 inauguration, and police arrested hundreds of oppositionists, including Boris Nemtsov and Aleksei Navalny. Despite a crackdown by Russian authorities, close to fifty thousand Russians showed up for an anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow the next month.

  Boris Berezovsky.

  (Photograph courtesy of BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP/Getty Images)

  These protests, understandably, unnerved the Kremlin. Putin and his allies were all too aware that when people took to the streets in the neighboring states of Georgia and Ukraine, their governments were overthrown. And similar unrest was occurring in the Middle East with the Arab Spring. In the meantime, Putin had not forgotten about his nemesis in London, Boris Berezovsky, who continued to speak out loudly about the criminal nature of the Putin regime.

  Berezovsky and Putin

  In July 2010, a Moscow-based associate of Boris Berezovsky named Rafael Filinov visited the oligarch in London and handed him a gift—a black T-shirt. On the front of it these words were emblazoned: “Polonium 210, London-Hamburg. To be continued.” On the back of the shirt was “CSKA Moscow, radioactive death is knocking on your door,” together with a red Communist star and a symbol of radiation danger. The T-shirt was from Litvinenko’s accused killer Andrei Lugovoy, a known fan of the Russian soccer team CSKA, who had received tickets from Berezovsky to attend a football match between CSKA and London’s Arsenal on the day of Litvinenko’s fatal poisoning. According to Michael Cotlick, a former personal assistant to the oligarch, Berezovsky asked him to hand the “gift” over to the British police. Although at the time Berezovsky did
not view Lugovoy’s message as a huge threat, in retrospect it was a clear warning.1

  The real danger, of course, was not from Lugovoy, but from Putin, who apparently could not get Berezovsky off his mind. In the years following Litvinenko’s murder, the Kremlin persisted in blaming Berezovsky for many of the political murders that occurred under its watch. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty analyst Robert Coalson observed: “Berezovsky was an easy target for demonization thanks to his questionable business dealings, his penchant for secrecy and closed-door skullduggery, his unprincipled melding of business and politics, and the tendency of his business rivals and personal enemies to meet violent ends. His long list of sins seemed somehow to cancel out in the public mind startlingly similar accusations against Putin and his inner circle.”2

  The relationship between Berezovsky, a former mathematician, and Putin went back a long way. The two first met in October 1991, when Berezovsky, then a successful entrepreneur as head of LogoVAZ, a highly profitable car dealership, brought an Oklahoma oilman to meet the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatolii Sobchak. Putin, who was working for Sobchak, helped Berezovsky develop LogoVAZ’s business in the city and the two became friendly. Reportedly, they even skied together in Switzerland.3

  As Berezovsky accumulated more and more wealth, including investments in Aeroflot, the aluminum industry, the television station ORT, and the oil giant Sibneft (his ownership of Sibneft shares later became a matter of dispute), he gained political influence as well. After working to promote Yeltsin’s successful campaign for re-election in 1996, Berezovsky became a part of Yeltsin’s inner circle, and in 1996 Yeltsin appointed Berezovsky deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, where he served for a year, after which he became secretary of the Organization for Coordinating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 1999 he was elected to the state Duma as a deputy from the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic. As noted earlier, Berezovsky, who viewed himself as a kingmaker, was instrumental in getting Putin appointed to head the FSB in July 1998. A year later, with presidential elections looming on the horizon and Yeltsin’s approval ratings in the single digits, Berezovsky pushed to have Putin appointed prime minister. He then used ORT to promote Putin’s candidacy for the Russian presidency in the March 2000 elections.