The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of his Alleged Killers

Other Withheld Materials

On 4 March 2015, just five days after the murder, the site newsru.com described visual and other technical materials that had been obtained by the investigation but had not made public.12

“The investigators of the law enforcement organs, who are heading the investigation in the case of the murder of Boris Nemtsov,” newsru.com wrote, “have compiled portraits of the proposed criminals, Ren TV reports… The police were able to follow the route of the automobile in which, presumably, there were concealed the killers. After this, the law enforcement organs requested all the materials contained in the ‘Potok’ [traffic monitoring] system… and also the tapes from the surveillance cameras. Drivers who were traveling on the route had the tapes from their dashboard cameras confiscated.”

“’These measures [Russian investigators said] permitted [them] to receive several images…. ‘From the film one can say that these people [the killers] most likely are natives of the southern regions of Russia [a source of Ren TV stated].’ Let us remark that the television channel Life News [a regime-controlled firm--JBD] announced the existence of a criminalistics portrait [photo fit] of the murderer of Nemtsov….”

“According to Life News, the police are seeking a VAZ-21102 silver colored vehicle with license numbers from the North Caucasus.”

From this 4 March report, it appeared that the investigators, almost from the beginning, had been in possession of dashboard camera footage and valuable material from the “Potok” road monitoring system that permitted them to identify the killers. Only a small amount of this material was, however, subsequently made public at the trial of Nemtsov’s alleged killers.