News agency RBC has disclosed information from the confessionary statements made by Zaur Dadayev upon his arrest for the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.
Citing two sources close to the investigation, RBC has reported that Dadayev claimed that a man from Chechnya nicknamed Rusik was behind the organization of the murder. This information was disclosed by Dadayev during interrogations. Rusik allegedly gave Dadayev a Makarov pistol and a ZAZ Chance automobile which the killers used to flee the crime scene. 24 hours after the murder, Rusik drove Dadayev to the airport, where Dadayev boarded a plane to Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic.
RBC reports that Rusik drives a Mercedes Benz with the license plate number 007. Earlier, sources speaking to RBC claimed that Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, another suspect in the case, had said that a car with this description belongs to Ruslan Geremeev, who had served with Dadayev in a Chechen police battalion called Sever.
RBC sources have said that Dadayev claimed Nemtsov’s killing had been carried out by Anzor Gubashev and Beslan Shavanov. Shavanov had blown himself up with a grenade during his arrest. In his statements, Dadayev did not mention the three other suspects, Eskerkhanov, Shadid Gubashev, or Khazmat Bakhaev.
Dadayev apparently decided to commit the crime because Nemtsov had actively supported the publications of caricatures by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. The idea to organize the murder came to him during a meeting with his Chechen compatriots in a Moscow café. They all criticized Charlie Hebdo and Nemtsov, since they thought he was the main initiator of publishing caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.
Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, was shot to death on February 27 in the center of Moscow. The first suspects were arrested one week later. Five suspects are currently under arrest: Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shagid Gubashev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Khazmat Bakhaev. Zaur Dadayev and Anzor Gubashev were the first to face charges. They are from Ingushetia and Chechnya, the North Caucasus regions of Russia.
There are reports that claim Dadayev had served in the Chechen police battalion Sever (North), a pro-Moscow force set up in 2006 in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus of Russia.
After his arrest, Zaur Dadayev confessed to the killing of Boris Nemtsov, but later took back his confession. On March 16, his lawyer Ivan Gerasimov announced that Dadayev has an alibi. The details of the alibi have not been disclosed.
The newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported earlier that a possible organizer of the killing was a man named Ruslan. The newspaper also reported that Ruslan is a relative of a high-ranking Chechen security services official.