Who Is Killing Russian Journalists?

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"NO BODY, NO CASE"
The team at the Agency for Journalistic Investigations believes that Maximov was murdered in an apartment in St. Petersburg, the same day he disappeared, after being invited there for a meeting and that his body was then removed by car and buried in woods outside the city. They also believe they know who killed him.

"Our sources described the place where he was buried to us, but it's a remote and densely forested area," Gorshkov said. "We made several trips there but have not yet been able to find the grave."

Gorshkov says the Agency for Journalistic Investigations also printed the name of the alleged police stooge in the corruption cases on its website. But the only response of the authorities was to scold Gorshkov.

He says he was summoned to the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office for questioning. "They told me indignantly that I did wrong by disclosing the identity of the police agent to the general public," he said.

The alleged police agent, who is also an actor, is sometimes cast in crime drama series on Russian television.

The agency passed all the information they had uncovered to prosecutors, hoping that arrests would follow in connection with Maximov's disappearance.

But that has not happened. Ivan Kondrat, head of the Northwestern Federal District General Prosecutor's Office, has said that Maximov's disappearance is still being "actively investigated" and that no suspects have been detained.

However in the wake of the corruption investigation begun by Maximov, three senior police officers in the anti-corruption unit are awaiting trial.

"Our office ... has charged Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Smirnov and majors Lev Pyatov and Andrei Bochurov with ... entrapment and giving false evidence," Kondrat said.

But Kondrat made it clear the officers have not been charged in connection with the disappearance or presumed death of Maximov.

So how does journalist Gorshkov see the failure of the authorities to find those who abducted and possibly killed Maximov?

"On the one hand we can say there is an obvious shortage of competent professionals in Russian law enforcement," Gorshkov said. "And on the other hand the people who we suspect are responsible for Maxim's murder apparently have connections and contacts strong enough to block the investigation. ... And, as Russian detectives put it, ‘No body, no case.' "

13 KILLINGS, ZERO CONVICTIONS
In its annual report, released in autumn 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists called Russia "the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists over the past 15 years, behind only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq and Algeria."

The most recent statistics collected by this respected international organization show that 42 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992, many in contract-style executions. The vast majority these killings remain unsolved.

In a just-released report, the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute says 88 people working for the media died violently in Russia since 1996, second only to Iraq.

Most alarmingly, of 13 contract-style killings of journalists committed in Russia since Putin came to power, not one has resulted in any convictions or prosecutions.

Most journalists who have been murdered were investigating high-profile corruption cases and found themselves on the wrong side of the Kremlin.

"The fact that the journalists who were killed were almost exclusively critics of the Kremlin does not on its own make the Kremlin responsible," said Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the Russian Anti-Corruption Committee, a nongovernmental organization based in Moscow.

"But the fact that investigations of these murders always stall and that nobody has been brought to justice shows either that the state is too weak to mount an uncompromised and transparent investigation or that it has a hand in the crimes."

But Mikhail Grishankov, deputy head of the State Duma's security committee, blames Russia's pervasive corruption.

"Killing is a preferred method of solving a problem in a corrupt society, and unfortunately, it is still a problem in Russia," Grishankov said. "