Last Updated on June 8, 2019 by LawEuro
Information Note on the Court’s case-law 220
July 2018
Mazepa and Others v. Russia – 15086/07
Judgment 17.7.2018 [Section III]
Article 2
Article 2-1
Effective investigation
Inadequate and protracted investigation into contract killing of investigative journalist: violation
Facts – The applicants are relatives of Ms Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned investigative journalist covering, inter alia, alleged violations of human rights in the Chechen Republic and an adamant critic of President Putin’s politics. She was fatally shot in her block of flats in Moscow in 2006. The prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation the same day. In 2014 five persons were convicted of the murder, which the Moscow City Court characterised as one committed by an organised group for a fee in connection with the victim’s performance of her professional and civic duties. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging between twelve years and life imprisonment. The investigation was, at the time of the Court’s consideration of the case, still pending.
Law – Article 2 (procedural limb): The pivotal question was the respondent State’s compliance with its obligation to carry out an effective investigation into the contract killing of an investigative journalist. In such cases, it was of the utmost importance to check a possible connection between the crime and the journalist’s professional activity.
(a) Adequacy of the investigation – The investigation had brought tangible results as it had led to the conviction of five persons directly responsible for the killing. However, when investigating a contract killing, genuine and serious investigative efforts had to be taken with a view to identifying the intellectual author of the crime, that is, the person or people who had commissioned the assassination. Given the respondent State’s failure to provide copies of the investigation file, the Court’s capacity to assess the nature and degree of the investigation’s scrutiny in the present case was thus greatly diminished and restricted to the analysis of the parties’ written submissions before it.
The domestic investigations had focused on one hypothesis regarding the identity of the person who had commissioned the killing, namely “a well-known Russian former politician in London” who had died in 2013. However, the respondent State had not explained why the investigation had chosen to focus for a considerable number of years on that single line of inquiry, which had remained unsupported by tangible evidence. Furthermore, given Anna Politkovskaya’s work covering the conflict in Chechnya, the investigative authorities should have explored the alleged implication of the officials from the Federal Security Service or from the administration of the Chechen Republic, even if such allegations were eventually proved unfounded. In sum, the investigation into Anna Politkovskaya’s killing had not met the adequacy requirement.
(b) Promptness and reasonable expedition of the investigation – The criminal investigation had started on 7 October 2006 and was not yet terminated. The respondent State had not provided highly plausible and convincing reasons to justify the length of the proceedings. In particular, its reference to the number of volumes of the investigative file and that of witnesses questioned appeared irrelevant in the absence of tangible results in the investigation in respect of those who had commissioned the killing. The investigation had thus been in breach of the promptness and reasonable expedition requirement.
(c) The involvement of the relatives in the investigation – Although several of the family’s requests for investigative measures had been refused, considering the proceedings as a whole, they had not been excluded from the investigation to the extent that they had been deprived of the opportunity to participate effectively in the proceedings.
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The aforementioned findings sufficed to conclude that the investigation into Anna Politkovskaya’s killing had not been effective. The Court did not find it necessary to examine the issue of the independence of the investigation.
Conclusion: violation (five votes to two).
Article 41: EUR 20,000 jointly in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Huseynova v. Azerbaijan, 10653/10, 13 April 2017, Information Note 206; Mustafa Tunç and Fecire Tunç v. Turkey [GC], 24014/05, 14 April 2015, Information Note 184; and Gongadze v. Ukraine, 34056/02, 8 November 2005)
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