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Six Acquitted in Russian Murder Case
June 26, 2002
By IRINA TITOVA
MOSCOW (AP) - A military court acquitted six men for lack of evidence Wednesday in the 1994 killing of a Russian journalist who was investigating military corruption. The killing sparked nationwide outrage and rattled reporters across the country.
Prosecutors and the parents of slain journalist Dmitry Kholodov said they would appeal the acquittal of the five former paratroopers and one businessman.
As the verdict was announced, Kholodov's parents looked on in frustration while his former colleagues from the outspoken daily Moskovsky Komsomolets expressed anger.
``The court said the investigators, who I believe are professionals, just made up many things,'' said Zoya Kholodova, the journalist's mother. ``If it was like that, those people would be writing fantasy books instead.''
Kholodov, 27 at the time of his death, was investigating allegations of corruption in the army's intelligence service in October 1994 when an anonymous caller told him he could find evidence in a briefcase stored at a train station.
Kholodov retrieved the case, and when he opened it at his office, it exploded, killing him and wounding a colleague.
Russian media have criticized prosecutors for taking so long with their investigation, saying it reflected the government's inability or unwillingness to solve Russia's many violent crimes.
But Vladimir Levin, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said ``the case was trumped up in order to abuse former Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev'' and that ``only real professionals could commit such murder.'' Grachev was one of the about 300 witnesses to testify, including top members of the Russian military.
Grachev, who served as defense minister from 1992 to 1996, reportedly told the court that he had asked his subordinates to ``sort things out'' with journalists who wrote negative things about the army - but he said he meant talking to them, not killing them.
Russian media had suggested the defendants interpreted Grachev's complaints about Kholodov's articles as a command to murder him.
``We didn't have anything to do with this,'' said defendant Alexander Soroka. ``Someone just wanted to use us to compromise some other higher-rank officials.''
Another defendants' lawyer said his client would seek compensation from the government for income and other losses incurred during the paratroopers four years in jail.
Elena Andrianova, lawyer for Kholodov's parents, said there had been discrepancies between evidence in court and the Wednesday verdict, which followed a 19-month trial. She said three defendants had confessed to some aspects of the crime but ``the court didn't find their confessions provable.''
Boris Timoshenko, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a press freedom organization, said the decision illustrated the problems of the Russian justice system that ``for such a long time hasn't been able to properly build the basis of proof - even for such significant case.''
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