Economist: Russian political murders / Deaths in Moscow

The Economist
Russian political murders
Deaths in Moscow
Jan 22nd 2009 | MOSCOW

Political killings have become systematic in Russia. Their punishment has not

ON MARCH 26th 2000 Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia. By coincidence his election, partly promoted by the war in Chechnya, was soiled by a horrific crime that same night. A Russian colonel, Yuri Budanov, entered a house in the Chechen village of Tangi, home to an 18-year-old girl, Elza Kungaeva. Mr Budanov ordered his soldiers to wrap her in a blanket, put her in his armoured personal carrier and take her to his quarters.

The Economist
Russian political murders
Deaths in Moscow
Jan 22nd 2009 | MOSCOW

Political killings have become systematic in Russia. Their punishment has not

ON MARCH 26th 2000 Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia. By coincidence his election, partly promoted by the war in Chechnya, was soiled by a horrific crime that same night. A Russian colonel, Yuri Budanov, entered a house in the Chechen village of Tangi, home to an 18-year-old girl, Elza Kungaeva. Mr Budanov ordered his soldiers to wrap her in a blanket, put her in his armoured personal carrier and take her to his quarters.

Two hours later she was dead, her strangled naked body displaying marks of severe beating. She was buried in secret but an autopsy later showed that she had been raped and sodomised. After a three-year legal odyssey, Colonel Budanov was sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder. A rare case of a Russian officer being brought to justice for a wartime crime in Chechnya, it became a symbol of the army’s atrocities there.

On January 15th Mr Budanov was freed on parole for good behaviour, 18 months early. Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer for the Kungaev family, protested vainly against his early release. On January 19th Mr Markelov held a press conference, claiming that Mr Budanov was freed only after a false statement by the prosecution service.

After the news conference, Mr Markelov walked towards a Moscow metro station along a busy street, accompanied by Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist for Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s most daring remaining independent newspapers. A masked man following behind shot Mr Markelov dead. Ms Baburova chased the killer; he turned and shot her in the head, and she later died. It was about 3pm, barely a mile from the Kremlin. Even by Russian standards this was brazen.

Mr Budanov denied any involvement. Mr Markelov had defended many victims of human-right abuses, in Chechnya and elsewhere. He was particularly hated by Russia’s nationalists and neo-fascists, for whom Mr Budanov is an idol and a cause célèbre. (Ms Baburova had written about just these groups in her newspaper.)
AP
AP

Flowers for a human-rights defender

As Mr Markelov argued in his final news conference, Mr Budanov’s release reflected neither his own interest, nor the state’s. “It was in the interest of those who seek to undermine legal institutions in the Caucasus,” he said. Jailing Mr Budanov was a way to show Chechens that they could seek justice peacefully rather than turning to separatists for revenge. His release argued the opposite.

In Chechnya, it was seen as yet another sign of Moscow’s contempt. Even Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic’s pro-Kremlin president, was outraged. The killing of Mr Markelov eliminated a man whose name in Chechnya, according to Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, a campaigning group, “was synonymous with hope for justice.” It also epitomised the atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity that has flourished in Russia in recent years.

The list of dead journalists, campaigners for civil liberties and those who seriously harm the interests of over-mighty state officials is getting longer by the day. On January 13th a former Chechen rebel, Umar Israilov, who had turned against Mr Kadyrov and formally complained to the European Court of Human Rights of his involvement in kidnappings and torture, was gunned down in Vienna.

Last August Magomed Yevloyev, a journalist and owner of an opposition internet site in another north Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, was detained and “accidentally” shot by an interior ministry guard. His supporters blamed Ingushetia’s then president and interior minister. To the joy of the whole republic the Kremlin fired both men in October. But on December 30th Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, appointed the former interior minister to a new job of “federal inspector” in Moscow. Impunity, it seems, still prevails.

Mr Putin prides himself on having pacified Chechnya. The war is indeed over, but its legacy continues to poison and haunt Russia. Its methods have spread far beyond Chechnya to reach Moscow. In a recent road-rage incident in the Russian capital, two Chechen policemen bearing special security passes beat up and fired at a bus driver who cut in front of their Mercedes.

Mr Medvedev once pledged to fight “legal nihilism” in Russian society. But neither he nor Mr Putin has uttered a word about the killing of Mr Markelov and his brave companion, both of whom tried to defend the law from the abuses of the state.