EDITORIAL: Politkovskaya’s Killers

EDITORIAL

Politkovskaya’s Killers

Anna Politkovskaya

Last week Lt. Col. Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was arrested in Moscow and charged with masterminding the murder of hero journalist Anna Politkovskaya.  At the time he did so, Pavlyuchenkov was head of surveillance at Moscow’s Main Internal Affairs Directorate, the city’s main police force.  At long last, in other words, the world has learned that it was not some rogue elements from Chechnya, acting on the orders of Ramzan Kadyrov, who liquidated Politkovskaya.

It was the Moscow Kremlin.

Of course, anyone who thinks that the buck stopped with Pavlyuchenkov is deluding themselves.  And no matter how high up the investigation is allowed to proceed, the real killers of Politkovskaya will never be brought to justice, because it was the people of Russia themselves, in the final analysis, who caused this murder.

At long last, the Russophile scum who tried to claim the Kremlin had nothing to do with Politkovskaya’s killing have been exposed as the liars we always knew they were.  And this has happened only because of daring and relentless pressure being applied by Politkovskaya’s newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, to find her killers.  The Putin regime clearly made a huge mistake when it allowed NG to go on living after it killed Anna. Despite all the threats its faces daily, NG has focused like a laser from the day Anna fell on pursuing her killers no matter how high in the Kremlin the trail led.

Now, the papers’s efforts have forced the Russian government itself to admit part of the truth:  A high-ranking Moscow security official organized the murder, and it was carried out with the assistance of on-duty Moscow police officers. Of course, the Kremlin will never allow investigators to follow the trail of Anna’s blood all the way to the highest reaches of the Kremlin, but that doesn’t matter now.  Any intelligent person can clearly see how this murder happened.

We call upon the leaders of the Western democracies to stand up for Anna Politkovskaya. We call upon them to condemn the cowardice and evil of the current Russian government, and to demand that it step down from power as the malignant dictatorships across the Arab world are now doing.  If they continue to look the other way and more courageous Russian reporters and opposition political figures are cut down with violence, they will have blood on their hands.