A court in Moscow has charged two men with involvement in the killing of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition politician, and ordered three other suspects to remain in custody.
Russian law enforcers are hunting for more suspects in the high-profile murder that has sent shock waves across the country and drawn a wave of international condemnation.
Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and fierce critic of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on February 27th on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow in a daring murder that had the marks of a contract killing.
A judge at Basmanny district court charged Zaur Dadayev and Anzar Kubashev with the murder and the illegal possession of weapons at a hearing yesterday.
Three other suspects including Ramzan Bakhayev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Shagid Kubashev, the younger brother of Anzar Kubashev, were remanded in custody in connection to the case. All five defendants pleaded not guilty.
North Caucasus
Police investigating the Nemtsov murder have been focusing their activity in Russia’s restive North Caucasus where
Mr Dadayev
and the Kubashev brothers, both of Chechen origin, were arrested on Saturday. Two other suspects were detained during a swoop on a private house in a suburb of Moscow at dawn yesterday.
In Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, a suspect blew himself up in a residential building after tossing a hand grenade at police demanding his surrender yesterday, Interfax reported. No one else was injured in the blast.
Mr Dadayev had served as the deputy head of a Russian interior ministry battalion fighting Islamist rebels in Chechnya, said Albert Barakhoev, the acting head of the security council in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. Anzar Kubashev worked for a private security company at a Moscow hypermarket, he said.
Nemtsov was murdered while walking across a bridge near the Kremlin with his girlfriend after dining at a Moscow restaurant on the night of February 27th. The killer approached the couple from behind and fired five shots at the opposition politician before escaping in a car.
Colleagues of Nemtsov say the murder near the heavily- guarded Kremlin would not have been possible without official involvement. They also accuse the Kremlin of creating a climate of hatred that, demonising the opposition, sets the stage for political murders.
Provocation
Russian officials have suggested several possible motives for the killing including a “provocation” designed to destabilise the country. Another theory put forward by investigators last week was that Islamist extremists had targeted Nemtsov to avenge his criticism of the murder of
Charlie Hebdo
journalists last month.
Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition activist, warned yesterday that investigators could be using people from the North Caucasus as scapegoats for the murder while failing to reveal who was behind the crime.
"Two Chechens have been appointed the guilty ones," he wrote on Facebook. "It's so predictable."
Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, said he knew Mr Dadayev “as a real Russian patriot” who had risked his life while serving in the interior ministry in the republic.
“He could not act against his country,” Mr Kadyrov wrote on Instagram.