MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Yuri Filippov) - The jury has acquitted all the defendants in the case of Paul Klebnikov, editor in chief of Forbes Russia, who was shot dead on July 9, 2004, near his Moscow office.
The defendants, a Moscow notary Fail Sadretdinov, Musa Vakhayev and Kazbek Dukuzov, were released as soon as the jury had brought in the verdict.
An American of Russian descent, Klebnikov came to Russia in the mid-1990s. From 2004 he headed Forbes Russia and immediately captivated Russian readers by publishing a list of local billionaires and multimillionaires.
He had a reputation of a brilliant investigative journalist. In 1996, he wrote an article called "Godfather of the Kremlin," which later was made into a book devoted to Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Klebnikov tried to prove the latter's involvement in the murder of a prominent Russian journalist, Vladislav Listyev, one of the founders of the new Russian television.
According to the General Prosecutor's Office, the reason for Klebnikov's murder was his other book, "Conversations with a Barbarian," written as a monologue of former Chechen field commander and notorious criminal Khozh-Akhmet Nukhayev, with the journalist's comments. Prosecutors maintained that it was resentment over the book that made Nukhayev, who is now in hiding abroad, hire Vakhayev and Dukuzov, both ethnic Chechens, to assassinate Klebnikov.
Klebnikov family lawyers did not contest this version, although many had serious doubts about it from the start: in his book, Klebnikov wrote about Nukhayev with respect and did not reveal anything new about the Chechens apart from what was widely reported in the press, on websites and in private conversations. The value of the book, as of many other works by Klebnikov, was in collecting isolated bits of information and putting them under one cover. Could it have been the reason for the murder?
The jury did not think so and did not find evidence of the defendants' guilt convincing. After the trial was over, the jury was to answer 54 questions, ranging from the defendants' involvement in the crime to possible mitigating circumstances. By a majority of votes, they decided that Klebnikov had been murdered by someone else.
The prosecutors did not agree with the decision. Their spokesman, Dmitry Shokhin, has already announced that they will contest the ruling.
From the very beginning, the case of the Russian American was under special supervision both in Moscow and Washington. The U.S. State Department repeatedly urged Russia to solve the murder of its citizen and to punish the perpetrators and those who stood behind them. During his visit to the United States in the fall of 2005, President Vladimir Putin met with Paul Klebnikov's widow and brother in New York.
The question now is whether the prosecutors are confident about their charges and whether they may yield to public pressure and turn to other versions, especially those related to the journalist's professional activities shortly before his tragic death. A group of Russian journalists are engaged in their own investigation and may share their findings with the prosecutors.
Remarkably, the former defendants are set to go to court on their own. All of them are determined to demand compensation for the time spent in jail. Kazbek Duzukov wants $1.5 billion, while Fail Satretdinov intends to prove that he was beaten by investigators, who allegedly tried to force him to testify against the Chechens.
Moscow observers have already described the acquittal as the proof of the jury's independence, since their ruling was impartial. This, however, does not answer the main question: what was the reason for Paul Klebnikov's murder and who are the perpetrators?
Journalists engaged in independent investigation say that Klebnikov was taciturn about his professional plans. Nevertheless, it is known that shortly before his death he intended to write about embezzlement of the money allocated to restoring war-torn Chechnya. This could have caused serious trouble for corrupt officials who had developed a scheme for stealing state funds. But the investigation never started. On June 25, 2004, Yan Sergunin, former Chechen deputy prime minister, who had promised to reveal information to Klebnikov, was murdered. Two and a half weeks later, Klebnikov met the same fate.
Now it will be up to investigators to find out and prove whether the journalist's death was caused by this investigation or other reasons. This time they will have to work harder than before.
