Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [128]
Then, on March 11, Felshtinsky and Sasha reported that they had reestablished contact with Gochiyayev. He seemed to have left Georgia; most likely he was in Turkey. His middleman suggested a meeting “in a third country” and promised to get back in touch to discuss logistics.
It was clear to all parties that the situation would come to a head when the two suspects held in Lefortovo went on trial. Trepashkin, representing Tanya and Aliona, would be able to raise questions in court, while Yushenkov would do what he could to drum up whatever controversies emerged from the courtroom. So Sasha and Felshtinsky raced the FSB to get to Gochiyayev first, to obtain his full statement before he was killed or caught. To me it looked like we were gaining ground. But then disaster struck.
April 17, 2003: An unknown gunman kills Sergei Yushenkov in front of his home in Moscow. Shocked members of the Duma agree that the killing is political. Most observers link the murder to Yushenkov’s role as the deputy chair of the Public Commission. In Denver, Aliona Morozova says in a statement, “I am afraid that to return to Russia would present a threat to my life, and I am asking the U.S. authorities to grant me political asylum.” In a message read at the slain deputy’s funeral, President Vladimir Putin praises “a brilliant politician who defended democracy and freedom in Russia.”
For a long time I was of two minds as to who killed Yushenkov, and why. His murder fit the mounting pattern of conspiracy theories, from the apartment bombings to the Terkibayev revelations. But then again, none of them had been proven, and, as a scientist, I had to consider that they could have been coincidences, however improbable. Intuitively it was logical that the FSB killed Yushenkov, who was the most vocal promoter of anti-FSB allegations. Then, a competing theory about Yushenkov emerged. Two months after the murder, the police caught his assassins. The two perpetrators turned out to be career criminals and drug addicts, who were paid for the hit by a certain Alexander Vinnik, a Liberal Russia functionary from the provincial center of Syktyvkar. Vinnik confessed and said that he had acted on behalf of Mikhail Kodanev, Yushenkov’s rival in the Liberal Russia leadership. When the four of them went on trial, Kodanev was the only one who pleaded not guilty. Vinnik was lying, he said.
Yet Kodanev had a motive. In July 2002, a couple of months after Liberal Russia had been formed, Yushenkov had a conversation with a highly placed official at the Justice Ministry. He told him in no uncertain terms that the party would never be registered for the 2003 elections if Berezovsky remained on its candidate list. That was the president’s explicit order. Yushenkov had no choice; he agreed to dump Boris. The party split in half, with a Yushenkov wing and a Berezovsky wing. But then Yushenkov came to London, sat down with Boris, and they reconciled: after the party was registered, Boris’s wing would return to Yushenkov’s fold. Kodanev had been Number Two in Boris’s wing, but would have faced a much lesser standing in the reunited party. According to the prosecution, he put out the contract on Yushenkov when he learned about his reconciliation with Boris.
On the testimony of Vinnik, Kodanev was convicted and given a sentence of twenty years. I had met Kodanev a couple of times in London, and I did not like him. But Sasha was adamant that it was all a setup. The two killers were probably recruited by the FSB while in jail, he said. They were promised a few months of freedom and a reduction in their remaining sentences in exchange for the hit and for naming Vinnik as their patron. Vinnik, in turn, was told to name Kodanev or face a life sentence. Sasha had no doubt; he had seen dozens of such cases. With his pledge to make the bombings an election issue Yushenkov was a threat; Kontora would stop at nothing to get rid of him. How could I not