Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported on March 8 that Zaur Dadaev, 29, a native of Russia's Ingushetia, confessed he is involved in the Feb. 27 assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.
Officially
unemployed, Dadaev said he carried out the murder with a man whose last name is
Alkhanov. Interfax news agency reports that “Alkhanov” committed a suicide in the
evening on March 7 during the attempt by police to arrest him in Grozny, a capital
city of Russia’s Chechen Republic.
Dadaev
is under arrest by court order until April 28 and is facing a charge of
conducting a paid-for homicide.
He
didn’t agree with the court decision, but didn’t respond when was directly
asked by the journalists if he considers himself guilty.
The
prosecutors say more people might be involved in the murder.
Meanwhile,
police detained several other suspects in killing Nemtsov. Those are Shagid
Gubashev, Tamerlan Eskerhanov and Hamzat Bahaev. All deny any wrongdoing.
Nemtsov, 55, was murdered on the night of Feb. 27 in Moscow near Red Square
while walking home from a restaurant with his 23-year-old girlfriend Anna
Duritska from Ukraine.
A former deputy prime minister
and energy minister, he was lately serving as a member of Yaroslavl regional
council while also co-heading Parnas, an opposition political party.
Many think Russian leader
Vladimir Putin stands behind the crime. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said
police should consider this as a key version, though the investigators think Ukrainian
special services, the Russian opposition or Islamic radicals could stand behind
the killing.
Putin’s press secretary
Dmitriy Peskov said the Russian president thinks the murder is a provocation
meant to make him look guilty.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
