A Moscow jury has found five men guilty of murdering the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, following a trial denounced by his family and allies as a cover-up that failed to bring the masterminds of the assassination to justice.
Zaur Dadayev, a former officer in the Sever battalion of security forces in Chechnya, was found guilty on Thursday of shooting the former deputy prime minister six times with a 9mm pistol as he walked near the Kremlin with his girlfriend in February 2015. Four other men were found guilty of involvement in the killing.
The assassination of Nemtsov – one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics – sent shockwaves through the opposition, with thousands turning out on the streets to mourn his death.
“We can’t say we’re satisfied with the verdict,” Nemtsov’s family lawyer Vadim Prokhorov told journalists. “We would be happy if the murder hadn’t happened. But the main thing is neither the organisers nor those who ordered [the killing] have been found.”
Nemtsov’s daughter Zhanna criticised the judge’s decision not to allow questions about her father’s opposition politics to be asked at the trial.
“In Russia and the world people are convinced the murder that was committed had a political subtext, but our investigators and court deny the obvious,” she wrote on Facebook. “At the same time, they haven’t been able to establish any sort of motive for the murder.”
The family has called for Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to face investigation over the killing. Prokhorov said the family would continue to insist that “Kadyrov’s close circle was involved in the crime”.
During the trial the court heard that Dadayev had agreed to kill Nemtsov in exchange for payment of 15m roubles. He then assembled a team of men who rented a flat in Moscow and began surveillance of the politician.
The court heard that on the night of the murder, three of the men tailed Nemtsov to a shopping mall close to the Kremlin, where he dined with his girlfriend. When the couple left, those men gave the signal to the triggerman – Dadayev – who shot Nemtsov before fleeing in a getaway car.
A sixth suspect was killed by a grenade when security forces tried to detain him in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
Dadayev initially admitted to shooting Nemtsov, but later said he had been tortured to give this confession. He and the four other men accused of helping to carry out the murder all denied their guilt in court.
Dadayev’s lawyer said the trial had been marred by procedural violations and promised to appeal against the ruling.
Zaurbek Sadakhanov, the lawyer for one of the other defendants, said: “This was not justice. It was only an imitation of justice to declare to the world that the murder of the politician Boris Nemtsov has been solved.”
Nemtsov’s family has repeatedly petitioned investigators to look into Kadyrov’s possible involvement and for Ruslan Geremeyev, the commander of the police unit in which Dadayev served, to face questioning. The police commander was summoned to testify, but failed to show up.
Testimony revealed that Geremeyev had allowed Dadayev to go to Moscow and had hired a woman to clean and cook for him there.
Investigators told the court last year that they visited Geremeyev’s property in Chechnya but “no one opened the door”.
Investigators named Geremeev’s driver Ruslan Mukhudinov as an organiser and said he offered the suspects millions of roubles for the murder. Mukhudinov has since fled and investigators said after the verdict that the case against him was still ongoing.
Kadyrov has previously made threats against Russia’s marginalised liberal opposition and posted a video of two opposition leaders in crosshairs last year. He was awarded a medal by Putin the month after Nemtsov’s murder.
When Dadayev was arrested shortly after the assassination, Kadyrov defended him as a “true patriot”.
On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists it was “necessary to find and hold accountable not only those who carried out such murders but also those who ordered them”. This “process sometimes takes years,” he warned.
Other cases involving the killing of Kremlin critics have failed to bring closure. Although five men were convicted of carrying out the 2006 murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s, no one has been brought to justice for ordering the hit. She investigated human rights abuses in Chechnya, and her newspaper has also claimed Kadyrov may have been involved in the killing.
Much of the evidence that the Nemtsov family had hoped to see was not uncovered during the trial. Journalists and activists had pointed out that several security cameras were pointing at the bridge where Nemtsov was shot, but no footage was produced in court.