NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED IN RUSSIA

Friends and colleagues of the murdered American editor of the Russian Forbes magazine criticised the trial of his alleged murderers, which opened yesterday, as a whitewash that was closed to the public and press. The investigative journalist, Paul Klebnikov, 41, was shot eight times outside his Moscow office on July 9, 2004, in the first contract killing of a Western journalist in Russia. Two men yesterday pleaded not guilty to his murder.

One of the last people to see Mr Klebnikov alive, Alexander Gordeyev, the deputy editor of Russian Newsweek, denounced the trial as “a cover-up involving state officials”. He said: “This should have been the most open case possible. The fact the court will be closed helps the real murderers.” Two Chechen men, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, are being tried for the murder, which the general prosecutor’s office argues was a contract hit ordered by the fugitive Chechen warlord Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev in revenge for a book that Mr Klebnikov published about him in 2003. A third man, Fail Sadretdinov, is accused of helping to arrange the killing.

Mr Gordeyev said that the dying Mr Klebnikov had told him that he was shot by a Russian, not by a Caucasian, and that he had twice given evidence of this to the prosecutor. “There’s no logic for Paul to be killed for a previous story. I think it was something he was working on at that time which got him killed,” Mr Gordeyev said. Friends and colleagues say that they do not know what stories Mr Klebnikov was working on when he was killed. His computer and files were taken away by the Interior Ministry to help with its investigation.

The Klebnikov family said that it was very disappointed that the trial was closed to the public. The murdered journalist’s brother, Michael Klebnikov, said: “We argued very strongly for an open trial in court in December. If the case had been open, it would have been a very important occasion for Russian people.”

The US State Department also strongly urged that the trial be open, officials at the US Embassy in Moscow said. However, the judge turned down the appeal of the family and the US Government, saying the court had to be closed to protect state secrets. Mr Klebnikov grew up in the US but moved to Russia in 2004 to become editor of the Russian language version of Forbes. He believed that, under President Putin, a new era of transparency was dawning in Russia and that the Russian Forbes would play an important role in that process

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