TAKEN OUT
A RIVAL of Vladimir Putin was assassinated after being shadowed by an agent linked to a Kremlin hit squad, a new investigation has claimed.
In a further twist, the prime suspect in the killing of Boris Nemstov is now part of the Russian forces brutally besieging the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
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Putin foe Nemstov was shot dead just yards from the Kremlin in February 2015 soon after condemning Russia’s first attack on Ukraine in 2014.
Now a report from investigative websites Bellingcat and the The Insider, working with the BBC, has revealed Nemstov was tailed by a Russian agent they name as Valery Sukharev.
And the prime suspect in the murder Ruslan Geremeyev has now been pictured in Mariupol, where the 43-year-old is part of the Chechen contingent fighting there.
According to the new investigation, Sukharev tailed Nemstov on at least 13 journeys while he served with Russia’s main security agency, the FSB.
The information was obtained through flight and train reservations recorded in an FSB database called Magistral, which the investigators have been able to obtain via corrupt officials.
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The database captures the movements of agents as well as the people they are tracking.
Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat, told the BBC that in “a corrupt society like Russia” Magistral “is a double-edged sword”.
He said “it allows people like us to actually go and tail these same spies, these same FSB officers”.
After Nemstov’s murder a team of five men of Chechen origin were arrested and then jailed.
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But his family has repeatedly asked investigators to look into Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s possible involvement.
Their lawyer Vadim Prokhorov also called for Geremeyev, who was the commander of the police unit in which one of those convicted served, to face questioning.
Prokhorov has named Geremeyev as the person he believed to have been behind the killing.
Geremeyev was declared a suspect at the end of 2015 but he never faced questioning and he later reportedly fled to Abu Dhabi.
The US Treasury imposed sanctions on Geremeyev in connection with the killing and for alleged torture.
Russian investigators twice tried to bring charges against him as the possible organiser of Nemtsov’s murder but were blocked by the head of the Investigations Committee, said Treasury officials.
Geremeyev has now cropped up in a video surrounded by gun toting henchmen in front of a bomb damaged building in Mariupol.
A Chechen flag with Kadyrov’s face on it can be seen fluttering behind them.
Up to 90 per cent of the city, home to 400,000 before the war, has been destroyed or damaged after a month of heavy shelling, according to Ukrainian authorities.
He is a major in the Chechen forces’ North battalion and in a post on social media Kadyrov described Geremeyev as his “dear brother”.
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“I call him Ruslan the Good because he always gets the job done,” he said.
“He was assigned the most difficult area of Mariupol, but in this task the commander has acquitted himself perfectly.”
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