Precisely three years ago, on 7th October 2006, a woman in Moscow came home after shopping and was about to take the lift up to her flat in the centre of Moscow. With her into the lift came an assassin. With four shots he killed her.
Anna Politkovskaya was a mother of two and died aged 48 years old. She was Russia's most profiled and bravest journalist. Through her newspaper the Novaja Gazeta and through her books, she assumed a role as the most prominent critic of the Russian regime's human rights abuses, political murders, kidnappings and abductions, torture, censorship and corruption. But her most lasting legacy will be to have revealed Russia's own participation in acts of terror.
Against threats, intimidation and poisoning, Anna tirelessly pursued the evil forces that since 1999 - when Vladimir Putin came to power - have systematically broken down fragile democratic institutions and concentrated absolute control in the hands of the Russian Secret Police, the FSB. Termed by many to be a "gangster regime."
In particular, she became the voice from a dark corner of Northern Caucasus, where Chechens were massacred by the tens of thousands and towns bombed to rubble for a second time within the same decade. She unmasked the crimes and the criminals, and her honesty and determination was hated in the Kremlin and by their puppet representatives in Chechnya.
Anna was my friend and I admired her courage and integrity and genuine humanity. A couple of weeks before her death I met her for the last time at a conference in Stockholm. She had new evidence about the Russian judicial system. She had found out that unconnected individuals were brought in to produce false accusations against ‘enemies of the state', often leading to ‘confessions' that were extracted under the most horrible and systematic torture. Her material was very compromising and linked directly to then Prime Minister, now President of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Anna was a mediator in the Dubrovka theatre hostage siege in Moscow in 2002. She later disclosed that this terrorist attack was actually coordinated by the Russian security forces. The following year she interviewed an FSB agent, Kanpash Terkibaev, who had participated in the attack and was the only ‘terrorist' to escape and survive - only to be killed shortly after for his outspokenness.
She was also on her way to act as a negotiator during the Beslan school siege two years later, but was poisoned on her flight from Moscow to Rostov. The poisoning could only have been carried out by the FSB. Anna survived, barely, but never fully recovered from it.
Anna Politkovskaya was recognized and celebrated in the West and received numerous awards and prizes for her journalism. For precisely the same reasons she was ignored by the Russian leadership. It took President Putin three days before he uttered one word about her brutal murder, and then in his indecent manner added: "her level of influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant."
As for the murders of Russian journalists, dissidents and human rights activists - the perpetrators are never found; and more importantly the people ordering the killings remain entirely anonymous. People have been brought to trial for the murder of Anna - and acquitted! Yesterday the Russian Supreme court ordered further investigation. However this is all a charade, I have no confidence we shall ever know who killed, or who ordered the killing of Anna Politkovskaya. But I have reason to believe the execution of regime critics are ordered at the highest echelons of the Russian power elite.
Anna Politkovskaya was a light in the uttermost darkness; she was hope for righteousness; she was the victims' brave voice. Her killing was also the killing of Russia's conscience.
I remember Anna with sadness and gratitude, bless her soul.
- And finally: 7th October is coincidentally also Vladimir Putin's birthday!
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum
