Monthly Archives: August 2007

It’s already falling like a house of cards.  Two more suspects in the Politikovskaya murder were taken off the list today.  Prosecutors announced that Oleg Alimov, one of the former Moscow police officers, has been freed from custody.  Alimov and his three colleagues were suspected of working with former FSB officer Pavel Riaguzov, police Major Sergei Khadzhikurbanov and three Chechen brothers in the murder.  However, Kommersant is now reporting that “an integral part of the Prosecutor’s map of the crime fell apart with the suspects Riaguzov and Khadzhikurbanov.  The General Prosecutor presented both with charges of abducting people, violating the privacy of homes, and abusing their position and using excessive official authority.”  These charges are for crimes the two men committed with their were a spook and a cop in 2002.  “I don’t understand on what basis they tried to tie my client to the Politkovskaya murder case,” Riaguzov’s lawyer ..read more

With all the hoopla around the Anna Politkovskaya murder case, we’ve forgotten to check in with good ol’Andrei Lugovoi to see how he’s doing. Whether valid or not the Politikovskaya murder is often linked with the Litvinenko murder with the following terms–dissident, “fierce Kremlin critic,” Berezovsky, Chechnya, KGB/FSB, and, of course, Putin.

Unlike the Politkovskaya case, however, the Litvinenko case remains stuck in a bureaucratic-diplomatic-legal quagmire. The Russian government has repeated refused allowing Lugovoi to be extradited to Britain. And so far the Russian authorities have been unsatisfied with what the British have provided by way of proof of Lugovoi’s involvement. “We have not received any evidence from London of Lugovoi’s guilt, and those documents we have are full of blank spaces and contradictions,” Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the committee investigating the Litvinenko affair at the Russian Prosecutors Office, told Rossiiskaya gazeta. The UK ..read more

Scratch two off the list of suspects in the Anna Politkovskaya’s murder.  Yesterday, authorities released Alexei Berkin from police custody for lack of evidence.  Prosecutors initially believed that Berkin was in league with the Chechen based Lasagna criminal gang (no really that’s what the article says ‘lasagna”  Man, these guys really need to lay off the Italian mob flicks).  Berkin couldn’t be reached for comment.  His wife told Kommersant that he was out walking the baby.  But she told reporters this, “We don’t want to relive this nightmare.  He won’t tell you anything because he made a non-disclosure agreement [with the police].”  Calls to Berkin’s mobile also went unanswered.  Apparently, it is still in police custody.

Prosecutors also discovered that the alibi for another one of its suspects, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, was true.  At the time of Politkovskaya’s murder, Khadzhikurbanov was in jail.

Way to go boys. Way to go.

Alexander Zaitchik and Mark Ames tackle the rise of skinhead violence in Russia in the latest issue of the Nation. As they point out, what was a trademark of Islamists–i.e. the beheading video–has now been adopted by Russian skins. In addition to the video, they note other signs of an escalation in skinhead violence. Namely the attack on anti-nuclear activists in Angarsk which left one antifa activist dead.

For sure there are numerous other examples of far right violence one could mention. And it seems that the Russian state is beginning to have enough. Earlier this month, a St. Petersburg court sentenced seven teens for killing an antiracist activist. The anti-extremism law seems to be applied more and more to the far right. This is despite the fact that today Russian authorities confiscated the computers from the Tolerance Support Foundation in Nizhny Novgorod under the ..read more

I’m currently writing a chapter about expulsions in the Komsomol. The section I’m writing at the moment concerns denunciations. I thought I would share the following denunciation letter from 37 Komsomols from a cell in Chernishevsky school in Nizhny Novgorod in 1926.

To the Komsomol Bureau.

From the Nizhny Novhorod cell from the Chernishevsky School

Appeal

We ask the Bureau VLKSM to take immediate measures to liquidate hooliganism which is observed in this cell. At night this cell holds drunken parties (this happened in March) of both sexes, after which the guys badger girls with propositions about a ‘sexual encounter.’ The majority of girls agree, but those who don’t are sent packing from the cell. [Members] from the city raikom come to these evenings and assemble an equal number of boys and girls. Many girls are pregnant and as a result live poorly. This group [that is those ..read more

More information is coming out about the individuals arrested for Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. Moskovskii komsomolets gives a run down of the suspects. The most high profile suspect is Pavel Riaguzov, 37, a former FSB lieutenant-colonel at the Moscow City Directorate. Riaguzov has been under FSB suspicion for some time for his alleged involvement in organized crime. Riaguzov’s specialty is surveillance. Investigators claim that he tapped Politkovskaya’s phone.

Four others under detention are former police officers Dmitri Lebedev, Dmitri Grachev, Oleg Alimov, and Alexei Berkin. None of them currently work for the police. Their specialties were, according to the Moscow daily, “external surveillance”. I take this to mean that they specialized in tails and monitoring Politkovskaya’s activities outside her home.

There is also Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, 40. Four years ago, Khadzhikurbanov led a police sting against business man Frank Alcapone (aka Fizuli Mamedov). The ..read more