The investigation of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder has centered on a man who, more than once, openly threatened to kill the journalist of Novaya Gazeta.  Sergey Lapin, nicknamed “The Cadet,” is a veteran of the war in Chechnya and formerly an official of the OMON, a special police detachment from the Khanty-Mansyski region in the Russian Federation.  Following an investigative piece by Ms. Politkovskaya, Lapin was arrested and, subsequently, convicted of torture.

Lapin interrogated in Siberia.  According to the Russian daily Kommersant, Moscow detectives and agents of the secret service who have been working on the Politkovskaya case recently went to the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk to interrogate Lapin.  The Russian investigators also interrogated his daughter; she is suspected of being the young woman pictured on the closed circuit television of a store adjacent to the journalist’s home at the time of the murder on  the 7th of  October.  The detectives, however, have been unable to speak with two other veterans, former colleagues of Lapin, Alexander Prilepin and Valery Minin, who have been on the run since 2002.  

The Article that nailed Lapin.  In September 2001, Anna Politkovskaya published a journal article that was later used by Russian prosecutors to indict the three officers.  The article reconstructed events surrounding the disappearance from Grozny, Chechnia, on January 2, 2001, of Zelimkhan Murdalov, a 26-year-old university student.   Ms. Politkovskaya discovered that the young man was arrested by a squad of the OMON commanded by Lapin, and that he was transferred to a police barracks in the neighborhood of Oktiabrskii, where he was tortured to death by Lapin.  Murdalov was beaten on the head with  clubs and subjected to electric shock; his teeth were knocked out, his ears cut off and his arms broken.  The following day Lapin and his two subordinates, Prilepin and Minin, took the young man’s lifeless body and carried it outside the city.  His body has never been recovered.

Medals for valor and a slap on the wrist.  Thanks to the article by Politkovskaya, Lapin was arrested in January of 2002 for kidnapping, torture and homicide.  After a short detention the officer was set free because  “He did not constitute a danger to public safety,” in spite of the face that he had sent several threatening e-mails to the Novaya Gazeta reporter.  Even though there was an inquiry in progress, Lapin remained on the police force in the city of Nizhnevartovsk and even received a medal of valor “For Protecting Public Order,” along with a letter signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin himself. Lapin’s trial began only at the end of 2003, after the investigation had been closed and then reopened eight times, and did not end until March of 2005.  He was convicted and sentenced to eleven years for abuse of police powers, aggravated bullying and falsifying records.  Not for homicide.