Russia condemned by the ECHR

On October 7, 2006, Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in the lobby of her building in Moscow. On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights, seized by his family, condemned Russia for failures of the investigation. The court charges Moscow with a violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the "right to life". The Russian authorities will have to pay 20,000 euros to the mother, sister and children of the journalist murdered for non-pecuniary damage. Not final, the judgment rendered Tuesday, by a majority of five judges against two, can be appealed within three months.

Before her murder, the journalist, a figure of media opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had already been kidnapped for 48 hours, as well as several arrests and poisoning. Several death threats had also been made against him. On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya returned to her apartment in North-East Moscow after shopping. Hardly had she time to get back to her car, when two men quietly waiting for her in the lobby of her building came up with a weapon in her hand. They shoot at her, she collapses. Aged 48, the reporter of Novaya Gazeta is found dead several minutes later. Initially considered to be a criminal act, as there are many in the Moscow capital, murder makes a big splash in the press after the revelation of its identity.

Anna Politkovskaya was famous for covering the Chechen conflict as well as for his investigations into the ruling power and his opposition to President Vladimir Putin. The journalist was known for her investigations of Russian abuses in Chechnya, during the second campaign in the region against the rebels, but also on violence in the army or the corruption and lies of politicians. In an interview with Télérama in 2003, she continued to investigate, despite threats, to help those who spoke to her: "I do not have the right to refuse, because if someone asks for the help of a journalist, it is that he has exhausted all remedies. This is also why this war (the second Chechen war from 1999 to 2000, ed.) Has become for me a personal matter ". "People sometimes pay with their lives to say aloud what they think …", she had let go before her badbadination.

The sponsors of the badbadination never identified

Four days after the murder, Vladimir Putin Visiting Germany, who had remained silent until then, said: "Yes, it is true that this journalist used to criticize the federal authorities, but I think she should know that what she wrote could not stay without consequence".

Since then, the survey has been skating. Six people who participated in the execution of the journalist were certainly sentenced to heavy prison terms, but without the sponsors are never identified. "In a homicide of this type, it can not be considered that the investigation was appropriate if no effort was made to identify the sponsor of the murder," said the jurisdiction of the Council of Europe on Tuesday. "Justice was not done," Sergei Sokolov, the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta whose words had been reported by La Croix in 2016, had repeatedly denounced. "Yes, those who killed her are in prison but not their boss, nor the boss of their boss," he lamented.

"The State should have examined the allegations of the applicants (the family of the victim, editor's note) that agents of the FSB (the Russian secret services, ed) or representatives of the Chechen administration had been involved in the organization of the murder ", regretted the judges of Strasbourg on Tuesday. And to point out that the Russian authorities were content to develop a "main theory", involving a businessman residing in London and today deceased without any piece has ever been presented to support this badumption. Lom Ali Gaitukayev, sentenced to life for organizing the murder of the journalist, died in jail in June 2017.