27 February 2025, 23:07
Ten years after Nemtsov’s murder, those who ordered his assassination remain unnamed
On the tenth anniversary of the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, it became known that Abdul Elmurzaev, a native of Chechnya, has been put on the wanted list. He had been following Boris Nemtsov for two months before his assassination, the “Agency”* reports. Investigators have not yet made public the names of those who ordered the assassination of the politician.
Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in Moscow on February 27, 2015. On July 13, 2017, a Moscow court found natives of Chechnya Zaur Dadaev, Anzor Gubashev, Shadid Gubashev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, and Khamzat Bakhaev guilty of murder and sentenced them to terms of imprisonment ranging from 11 to 20 years. The criminal case also involves Chechen officer Ruslan Mukhudinov, who is believed to have organized the assassination, Beslan Shavanov, who was killed during his detention, and officer of the “Sever” (North) Chechen battalion Ruslan Geremeyev. The person who ordered the assassination has not been identified.
Boris Nemtsov has repeatedly spoken out about the situation in Chechnya. In particular, the politician advocated the withdrawal of the Russian federal troops from the republic in 1996.
One of the first versions of the Boris Nemtsov’s murder was the version of his political assassination with the aim of eliminating one of the key opposition figures and intimidating the liberal public. Supporters of the mentioned version claimed that agents of the Russian special services were involved in the crime. The arguments given were that the assassination was committed near Red Square and the Kremlin.
The second version, about a Chechen connection, began to be voiced after the arrest in March 2016 of five suspects in the criminal case, all of them ethnic Chechens. According to the investigators’ version, the assassinator was Zaur Dadaev, a former fighter of the “Sever” (North) Chechen battalion. Meanwhile, Ramzan Kadyrov commented on the murder of the “Charlie Hebdo” cartoonists and assured that Zaur Dadaev was a “true patriot of Russia” and a “deeply religious person.” After the Ramzan Kadyrov’s statements, there was a version that the assassination attempt was motivated by religious beliefs.
In his autobiography “Confessions of a Rebel”, Boris Nemtsov described that at his first meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov at the Congress of the Chechen People in 2002, the future leader of Chechnya stated that Boris Nemtsov should be killed for his proposal “to eliminate the post of president and form a parliament, and then a government, with a view to some kind of compromise between various groups, including separatists.” Boris Nemtsov noted that the Chechens who stayed around began to say that Ramzan was joking. “However, I didn’t notice any joke in his eyes. I saw hatred in his eyes,” Boris Nemtsov wrote.
*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 27, 2025 at 06:37 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
Source: Caucasian Knot
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