Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [35]
Could not peace have been given a chance?
THE “MARCH 8” CASE: THOSE WITH MASKHADOV WHEN HE WAS LIQUIDATED ARE SENTENCED
December 5, 2005
The Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic has sentenced Vakhid Murdashev to 15 years’ imprisonment, Viskhan Khadzhimuratov to seven, Musa Yusupov to six, and Ilias Iriskhanov to five and a half. By recent Chechen standards these sentences are considered light. The young lads the security services seize, torture and force to confess to “terrorism” usually get 17–24 years.
Why this should be one can only guess. In throwing the book at boys nobody knows anything about, judges are taking no risks and ingratiate themselves with the authorities. In the case of Maskhadov’s associates the risk is obvious: there are plenty of pro-federal officials in Chechnya who continue to pay Basayev a “resistance levy” to buy their way out of trouble and avoid execution as collaborators.
That, however, is not the main reason. It did not become clear in the course of the trial who actually killed Maskhadov. The state prosecution, without producing a single witness, made public the conclusion of a ballistic test which claimed that Maskhadov was killed by a bullet fired from a Makarov pistol belonging to Khadzhimuratov, Maskhadov’s bodyguard and nephew.
Why should the court suppose he was killed by a bullet? The results of the post-mortem were not published, so the cause of death remains unknown and you can bandy about whatever ballistic “evidence” you choose. Khadzhimuratov did not admit responsibility for the killing and the court ended up falling between two stools, apparently accepting the claim that Khadzhimuratov had fired the shot, but not finding him guilty of murder.
The obvious conclusion is that the purpose of this trial was to create a myth about how Maskhadov died. The verdict makes clear what legend was required for public consumption: the federals had virtually nothing to do with the assassination, it was the Chechens themselves who killed their leader. Moreover, it was all within a single family: Maskhadov was killed by his nephew, so if there is to be any settling of scores it will be contained within the family.
Is this what we expected from the Maskhadov trial? Of course not. We expected to learn the truth about his death, but that has been kept secret, so we can look forward to endless rumors, inventions, gossip and myths for years to come, as was the case when Maskhadov’s predecessor, Djohar Dudayev, was assassinated.
THE MAN WHO RE-EDUCATED FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBERS
September 21, 2006
On September 13, in a now notorious border checkpoint battle between the Chechen and Ingush militias, the Deputy Commander of Chechnya’s OMON Militia special troops, Buvadi Dakhiev, was wounded in the head and died shortly afterwards. The causes of the battle are clear enough and have been much debated and publicised. I want instead to describe some aspects of Buvadi’s character which could not be written about while he was alive. It is more than a tribute to the memory of a man who on a number of occasions helped me in my work during the war, at times probably saving my life.
Buvadi was a special person, riven by contradictions and with a split personality. He used to remind me of the monument on Khrushchev’s grave in the Novodevichy Monastery cemetery in Moscow, half of which is pitch black, while the other is white as snow.
On the one hand he was an archetypal member of the security services,