Anna Politkvovskaja, 16 years ago the murder in Moscow of the "uncomfortable" journalist from Novaya Gazeta

“

.

This is the main result of my work as a journalist in Chechnya and of the publication abroad of my books on life in Russia and the Chechen conflict ”. 

This said

, a Russian-American journalist and writer, born on August 30, 1958 and died on October 7, 2006, killed in an ambush in Moscow. 

He was on his way home.

She was killed with 4 shots (a military standard Makarov weapon) while she waited for the elevator.

of which the last, the safety one, exploded by the killer when she was probably still alive.

On October 5, 2006, Politkovskaya gave an interview to

during which she stated without delay that

(known in the news as the "butcher" of Grozny and who is now available to send his three minor children to war) was a "Coward armed to the teeth", "

The latest article he was working on, according to the chronicles, was intended to document the torture and killing of two people by a police force (Kadiroti) commanded by Kadyrov himself.

Due to the sheer

that fate imposes on the life of each of us, Vladimir Putin's birthday is celebrated on 7 October in Russia.

On 8 October, the Russian police seized Politkovskaya's computer and all the material of the investigation that the journalist was carrying out.

On 9 October, Novaya Gazeta editor

(Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2021) said that the journalist was about to publish, on the day she was killed, a long article on the torture committed by the Chechen security forces. to Prime Minister Ramsan Kadyrov.

Muratov adds that

are also missing from the appeal.

The notes not yet seized are published on 9 October itself, in the Novaya Gazeta. 

The funeral takes place on 10 October at the

More than a thousand people - including colleagues and mere admirers of the journalist - attend the funeral ceremony.

Among the participants in the funeral there is also

, a personal friend of the writer.

However, no representative of the Russian government participates in it.

Putin, after the murder, scornfully claimed that the influence of the murdered journalist on Russian political life was overestimated, that her death would do more damage than her writings and that behind this crime there could be someone interested in delegitimizing the official authorities. .

Petros V. Garibyan

on November 9, 2012 to the

, as the head of the investigation into the murder, openly stated: "I believe that the person who ordered the murder did so not only in retaliation against Anna Politkovskaya for his critical publications ".

And again, speaking of the instigator of the murder: "you committed an act of demonstration, primarily aimed at intimidating all journalists, as well as society and the authorities".

After investigating the journalist's life, her background, her relationships and her work at length, the

they established that the killer was linked to her "provocative reports", continues the investigator, who, however, did not find any connection between the work of the journalist and the Russian establishment.

After an initial trial in 2009 that saw two defendants distant from the facts, the trial ended on

condemning the five Chechen hitmen who were found guilty of the "material" execution of the journalist's murder.

This without being able to identify the principals in any way.

According to what emerged later, the five men, two of them sentenced to life imprisonment, were paid killers who in exchange for

they silenced an uncomfortable reporter.

Who had paid that sum remained a mystery and remains so today.

The European Court of Human Rights, at the appeal of the victim's family members, will condemn Russia in 2018 for the violation of Article 2 of the ECHR (European Commission of Human Rights) precisely for not having wanted to deepen the investigative hypothesis of the involvement of Russian and Chechen security services, to ascertain responsibility for the murder.

Handle

Cover of Anna Politkovskaya's book "For this", ed.

Adelphi

The carreer 

In the years of 

there was the hope that Russia would open up to democracy and become a state of law but the progressive affirmation of an authoritarian model of government, of which the violent war in Chechnya is a mirror, push Politkovskaya to a criticism increasingly tighter and more relentless than Putin's policy in Russia and the Caucasus.

Politkovskaja becomes an uncomfortable voice, which, with the ways of investigative journalism, carries forward themes that are typical of the already Soviet tradition of dissent. 

Since the first pieces dedicated to Chechnya, he receives death threats, but continues to follow the fate of the Caucasus for the "Novaya Gazeta", running high risks, but always seeking contact with the actors of the war, both Russian and Chechen, and military , and, above all, civilians.

He writes "Throughout my existence I want to be able to live a life as a human being in which every individual is respected." 

In October 2002 she was called by the Chechen terrorists who occupied the

theater to mediate in the negotiations with the Russian government.

The blitz by the Russian authorities makes all negotiations vain: the gas injected into the theater kills all the terrorists and many of the hostages.

This accentuates Politkovskaya's criticism of the government, which she accuses of being indifferent to the lives of its citizens, in order to win the game with the terrorists by force. 

Mindful of this precedent, in 2004 she tried to reach

where the terrorists occupied a school, but on the plane she was struck by an illness that forced her to return to Moscow: she claimed, without being able to prove it, that she was the victim of a attempted poisoning. 

Politkovskaya continues in her civic and journalistic commitment - despite the growing intimidation from which she is struck - from the pages of "Novaya Gazeta" until 7 October 2006. The journalist remains an uncomfortable figure, on whom silence is sought at home , despite his international fame, testified, among other things, by the numerous awards he received during his career and even after his death.

Her children have chosen to continue to keep her memory and example alive, and to seek the truth about her end away from the limelight of politics, but with determination.

"We Russians", he wrote "we do not want to be grains of sand on the high-ranking boots" of a KGB lieutenant colonel

(referring to Putin).

Between 1992 and 2021 in and around Russia there were the deaths of

or those who were far from the Kremlin's ideals.

Anna Politkovskaya is the best known among them.