| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Chechen ordered murder of US national |
| 2005-06-16 |
| Russian prosecutors have determined that a former separatist Chechen official who was the subject of a book by U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov ordered his murder, a spokesman said Thursday, announcing the resolution of one of the highest-profile killings in Russia in a decade. Vasiliy Lushchenko, a spokesman for prosecutor general's office, identified the suspected mastermind as Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev. He said a total of four people are suspected of involvement in the killing; two are in police custody and two are still at large. Klebnikov, a 41-year-old American of Russian descent who was editor of Forbes magazine's Russian edition, was gunned down last July outside the magazine's Moscow offices. Alexander Gordeyev, a colleague from the Russian edition of Newsweek who came to Klebnikov's aid, told The Associated Press then that the dying journalist couldn't say who could have been behind the attack. At the time, speculation was rife about a connection with Klebnikov's work at Forbes, which two months earlier had published a list of Russia's 100 wealthiest people that was said to have annoyed many in the nation's secretive business elite. But there was also ample speculation on Klebnikov's book, "Conversations With a Barbarian," which cast Nukhayev and other Chechen rebels in a sharply negative light. The book was based on his interviews with Nukhayev, a former deputy prime minister in the Chechen separatist government. "From the point of view of logic, the most obvious trail is the Chechen trail," said business commentator Yulia Latynina, who theorized that the book was seen by Nukhayev's circle as a stain on his honor. But Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center of Journalism in Extreme Situations, cast doubt on the likelihood that Nukhayev was behind Klebnikov's killings. "My main argument is that there have been lots of bad books written about Chechens," Panfilov said. "Why go after Klebnikov?" He suggested that prosecutors had announced a resolution to the case in hopes of heading off pressure from the U.S. authorities, who have been pushing Moscow to investigate the case thoroughly. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists is planning a conference in Moscow in July to focus on journalists who have been killed on the job, which Panfilov said could have provided another impetus to prosecutors to close the case. Authorities have said two Chechens, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, were in custody. Investigators revealed last week that the two were also believed to have been involved in the slaying in Moscow last year of Yan Sergunin, a former official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government. Klebnikov also was widely known for a book about controversial tycoon Boris Berezovsky. After Klebnikov wrote a profile of Berezovsky for Forbes in 1996, Berezovsky filed a libel suit against the magazine in Britain. He withdrew the suit in 2003 after the publication acknowledged it was wrong to allege he was involved in the murder of television personality Vladislav Listyev. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |