MURDERED Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya had obtained video evidence that purported to link Ramzan Kadyrov, the 30-year-old Prime Minister of Chechnya, to the kidnapping of two civilians. The grainy footage, shot on a mobile phone, shows a man resembling Mr Kadyrov - President Vladimir Putin's strongman in the bombed-out republic - looking on as a group of people in camouflage jackets bundle the civilians into the boot of a car. | One victim is seen resisting and is forced into the boot by the men, who were described by Politkovskaya as members of the Prime Minister's ruthless militia. |
Politkovskaya, Russia's most prominent investigative journalist, who was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block last weekend, never tired of accusing Mr Kadyrov and his men of kidnapping, torture and murder. Colleagues believe the video may contain clues to her own killing. She had sent it to the Russian prosecutor's office and hoped it would lead to action against Mr Kadyrov, whose father, Ahmad, was president until his assassination in 2004.
On October 5, Politkovskaya said on Radio Liberty in her last interview that she wanted to see him put on trial. "Kadyrov is a Stalin of our times," she said. "Kadyrov is a coward armed to the teeth and surrounded by security guards ... I dream of him some day sitting in the dock, in a trial that meets the strictest legal standards, with all his crimes listed." She added that she would give evidence against him. The prosecutor's office refused to comment on its inquiries into Mr Kadyrov or its investigation into the murder of Politkovskaya, 48.
Mr Kadyrov, a keen boxer who keeps a pet tiger, has always denied any wrongdoing and dismissed suggestions in the Russian press last week that one of his supporters may have been responsible for the murder. "Chechens don't kill women," he said. "Women are sacred to us. I have never killed a woman. I think the people who ordered her killing did it to blacken my name." He added that Politkovskaya's work "helped me".
Last week Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya's paper, published the article she was writing the day she was shot. It detailed evidence of torture by police in Chechnya.