DOHA, 12 April 2004 — The trial opened here yesterday of two Russian secret agents accused of the February murder of a former Chechen president in Doha, where he was living in exile.
Other than the two defendants present at the criminal court hearing, presided by judge Ibrahim Saleh Al-Nisf, Russian lawyers advising the defense lawyer, Qatari Mohsen Al-Suwaidi, attended the opening session.
The defendants, Anatoly Bilashkov Vladimirvich and Vassily Anatolyvich Pokchov, stand accused of ten charges, including the Feb. 13 assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
They are also accused of attempting to kill Yandarbiyev’s 13-year-old son and of smuggling arms into Qatar, according to the formal accusations read out in court by a representative of the prosecutor general.
Quoting “confessions by the accused”, the representative also said the arms used in the killing came overland in a diplomatic car.
The first attempt to kill Yandarbiyev on Feb. 6 failed because he was delayed in the mosque after Friday prayers, the representative added.
The next hearing was set for April 25 when witnesses will be called to testify in order to allow the defense to review the case.
In accordance with Qatari law, “only Arab lawyers can participate in pleading before the court,” a judicial source said.
However, lawyers from those countries that have a reciprocal agreement with Qatar, which allows lawyers from the Gulf state to take part in court hearings abroad, can also go before a Qatari court, the source added.
In what has escalated into a diplomatic row between the emirate and Russia, Qatar expelled the first secretary of the Russian Embassy late last month after detaining him and the agents in connection with the murder Yandarbiyev in a car bomb.
Qatar’s expulsion announcement was made just hours after the return to Doha of two Qatari nationals who were released by Moscow. The two members of the Qatari wrestling federation were arrested in transit at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Feb. 26 on suspicion of carrying undeclared foreign currency.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the two — Nasser Ibrahim Saad Al-Madhihiki and Ibrahim Ahmed Nasser Ahmed — were freed in the absence of any evidence that they had broken the law.
Their detention followed Doha’s arrest of the two Russian intelligence agents alleged to have murdered the 51-year-old Chechen leader and badly wounded his son in the explosion outside a mosque.
Russia has demanded that Qatar free the two agents, saying they had nothing to do with Yandarbiyev’s murder and that they had been posted to the Russian Embassy to help in the “fight against terrorism”, in particular terror financing. Moscow’s SVR foreign intelligence service also said it had nothing to do with the death of Yandarbiyev, who briefly headed Russia’s war-torn separatist republic of Chechnya in the mid-1990s.
Yandarbiyev, who had lived in Qatar for nearly three years with his family despite a Russian extradition request, was believed to have raised funds for Chechen rebels in the Muslim world.
He was killed a week after a bomb, blamed on Chechen rebels, tore through a crowded subway train in Moscow, killing at least 40 people.
