Investigative Committee denies European lawmakers access to the Nemtsov case files

By Boris Vishnevsky,  Member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and Yabloko Deputy Chair

Novaya Gazeta, 13.07.2020

On June 19, the European Court of Human Rights communicated Zhanna Nemtsova’s complaint over the official investigation into the death of her father Boris Nemtsov who was assassinated on February 27, 2015. Her complaint states that the Russian authorities have pointedly refused to classify the murder as politically motivated, have failed to establish the motives and question several key suspects, and have been withholding video footage from the scene of the crime.

International oversight procedures into the investigation of Boris Nemtsov’s assassination were launched by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in 2017, and by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2019.

The PACE report was adopted in June 2019; the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly report in February 2020. Both documents conclude that the Russian authorities have failed to carry out a thorough and comprehensive investigation into the assassination and call for bringing the masterminds and organizers to justice.  However, Russian officials have refused to cooperate with the rapporteurs from both organizations.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe appointed Lithuanian Member of Parliament Emanuelis Zingeris as its special rapporteur, and I already wrote in Novaya Gazeta on May 28 about him having been denied entry to Russia where he was supposed to travel to collect materials for preparing the resolution on the Nemtsov case.

It is worth mentioning that in response to my first request the Russian Foreign Ministry answered that PACE rapporteurs have no business coming to Russia since the Russian delegation does not participate in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Later, when the Russian delegation to the PACE was reinstated in its full rights, I sent another request to which I received the following answer: that Zingeris has been denied entry to Russia under mutual EU-Russia sanctions.

However, in this particular case Zingeris is not only a member of the Lithuanian Parliament – he is also a PACE rapporteur, and Russia’s international obligations supersede any sanctions.   For example, four members of the Russian Parliament, including the notorious Leonid Slutsky, have no trouble coming to Strasbourg despite being under EU sanctions.  Does this mean that France, in a “symmetrical response”, now has the right to deny entry to these dashing four?

As for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, its Vice President and Swedish Member of Parliament Margareta Cederfelt was appointed as the rapporteur there. Her report states that she was denied access to the criminal case files relating to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov because, according to Russian Foreign Ministry officials, they contain classified information.

I sent a request to Russian Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin asking him to confirm if there was any classified information in the two criminal cases relating to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, and to clarify the reasons why the OSCE PA rapporteur was denied access to materials that do not contain classified information. I expressly pointed out that Russia was not just a member state of the OSCE but one of its founding members, and thus had to comply with oversight procedures carried out by this international organization.

In response to my request to the Investigative Committee I received a remarkable answer signed by Major-General Nikolai Ushchapovski, acting head of the Main Department for the Investigation of Particularly Important Cases, which stated that “Ms. Cederfelt did not file any requests to access the materials of the criminal case, and the Moscow Military District Court carried out an open jury trial in the case of Boris Nemtsov’s murder.”

This is an easily refutable lie which makes it even more indecent.

On May 29, 2019, Ms. Cederfelt sent a letter to State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin requesting cooperation. On June 15, 2019, she received an official response from the Russian Foreign Ministry through the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen signed by Second Secretary Anna Tkachenko.

This message read as follows:

“It will not be possible for Ms. Cederfelt to have an access to the materials of the criminal case in respect of the death of Boris Nemtsov. In accordance with the criminal procedure legislation of the Russian Federation, only persons involved in criminal proceedings (Ms. Cederfelt is not among those) have the right to access the materials of criminal cases. In addition, the case file contains secret information that, in accordance of the Law of the Russian Federation ‘On State Secrets’ is an obstacle for getting access to the case for a citizen of a foreign state.”

The fact that Ms. Cederfelt has requested access to the case files can also be proven by the  comment made by the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson to Kommersant newspaper on February 22, 2020 stating that the Russian Embassy refused to grant access to the materials of the case to the OSCE rapporteur due to the case file containing classified information after “conferring with the competent Russian authorities.”

In other words, the Russian Investigative Committee claims that Ms. Cederfelt never requested access, which directly contradicts the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement that she did request access but it was not granted to her because the case file contains classified information.

This means that the Russian authorities have become so entangled in their lies with regard to the Nemtsov case that they cannot even be consistent in their own lying anymore.

Both the Russian Foreign Ministry’s response and that of the Russian Investigative Committee clearly suggest that the Russian authorities are not willing to allow any cooperation with international organizations in the investigation of Boris Nemtsov’s assassination.

And the reason for this is obvious: they would have to answer awkward questions; they would have to give access to information to international rapporteurs who cannot be pressured into silence and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This is why they cannot allow this, and even the most ridiculous pretext will do to prevent this from happening.

This confirms the key conclusion of the above-mentioned OSCE report: that “the main issue for addressing impunity [for the organizers and masterminds] is not the capabilities of the Russian law enforcement, but political will.”

And one last thing. It is telling that the Russian Investigative Committee does not mention state secrets as a reason for the denial of access. Meanwhile, according to Vadim Prokhorov, the Nemtsov family lawyer, more than 90 volumes of the criminal case that was tried at the Moscow Military District Court in 2017 did not contain a single document marked as classified. Moreover, it is unclear what this case could have to do with state secrets.

But then, of course, we are talking about the criminal case against the perpetrators who were convicted by the above-mentioned court.

However, there is another criminal case concerning the organizers and masterminds. In my request to the Russian Investigative Committee I inquired about classified information in this case as well, and received no response.

There can only be one explanation: could it be that the state secret here is actually the name of the mastermind?

Original article (in Russian) in Novaya Gazeta

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, member of Yabloko’s Federal Political Committee and head of the Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly