Former police officer had been serving a 20-year sentence over his function within the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
A person convicted for his function within the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been pardoned after combating in Ukraine, in accordance with his lawyer and native media experiences.
Politkovskaya, who was well-known for reporting on abuses in Russia’s struggle in Chechnya early in Vladimir Putin’s presidency, was shot useless outdoors her flat in Moscow in 2006.
The killing triggered an outcry within the West and underlined the rising risks of reporting in Russia as Putin progressively clamped down on impartial media.
Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, was sentenced to twenty years in jail in 2014 for organising the killing.
“As a special forces fighter, [Khadzhikurbanov] was invited to sign a contract to participate in the special military operation… When the contract expired, he was pardoned by presidential decree,” Khadzhikurbanov’s lawyer Alexei Mikhalchik instructed the AFP information company.
Khadzhikurbanov was convicted along with four other men from Chechnya, a principally Muslim area within the northern Caucasus the place Russia and its native allies crushed two rebellions, in 1994-96 and, below Putin, in 1999-2009.
In 2018, the European Court docket of Human Rights in Strasbourg discovered that, whereas the authorities had discovered and convicted a bunch of males who had instantly carried out the contract killing, they’d “failed to take adequate investigatory steps to find the person or persons who had commissioned the murder”.
Politkovskaya, who did a lot of her work for the impartial investigative journal Novaya Gazeta, now banned in Russia, received greater than a dozen worldwide prizes for reporting on abuses dedicated in Chechnya by Russian and allied forces in addition to by rebels, regardless of repeated detentions and demise threats.
Prisoner recruits
Many Russian prisoners have been despatched to battle in Ukraine since Moscow launched its offensive final February, with critics warning some have dedicated new crimes after getting back from the entrance.
The Kremlin final week acknowledged using prisoner recruits to battle in Ukraine and stated convicts who “atone for their crime on the battlefield with blood” could possibly be pardoned.
“They are atoning with blood in storm brigades, under bullets and under shells,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on Friday.
Russia has most likely recruited 100,000 individuals from prisons to battle in Ukraine, Olga Romanova, the pinnacle of an impartial prisoners’ rights group has estimated.
Native Russian media shops have reported a number of situations of launched prisoners occurring to commit severe offences, together with murders, after having left the military.
