MOSCOW (Reuters) - A court convicted five men of murdering Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on Thursday, but the late politician’s allies said the investigation had been a cover-up and that the people who had ordered his killing remained at large.

FILE PHOTO: Zaur Dadayev, charged with involvement in the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, speaks inside a defendants' cage in Moscow, Russia March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva/File Photo

Nemtsov, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was murdered in 2015 as he walked across a bridge near the Kremlin after dining with his girlfriend. Aged 55, he had been working on a report examining Russia’s role in Ukraine. His killing sent a chill through opposition circles.

After more than eight months of hearings, a jury trial convicted five ethnic Chechen men of his murder, including the man prosecutors said pulled the trigger, Zaur Dadayev, a former soldier in Chechnya.

The court said the four others had acted as his accomplices and that the group had been promised a bounty of 15 million rubles ($253,889.59) for the high-profile assassination.

Nemtsov’s supporters gave a muted welcome to the verdict, but said Dadayev and the others were only low-level operatives. The case remained unsolved, they said, because those who had ordered, financed and organized the hit had not been caught.

“It’s the biggest crime of the century and yet they haven’t identified the real organizers or those who ordered it,” Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for the late politician’s daughter, told reporters after the verdict.

“The Russian government was not prepared to look into the entourage of (Chechen leader Ramzan) Kadyrov,” he said, despite his view that one of the masterminds was a close associate of the Chechen strongman.

Zhanna Nemtsova, the slain politician’s daughter, repeatedly said she wanted Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed head of Chechnya who calls himself “Putin’s footsoldier”, to be questioned about what he knew about the case. Kadyrov has praised the trigger man Dadayev as a “true patriot of Russia”.

Kadyrov, who has denied allegations he was personally involved, was never summoned by the court.

Nemtsova said she was disappointed but not surprised that her father’s murder case remained unsolved.

“Clearly, investigators and the court did not strive to establish the truth,” Nemtsova said in a statement on social media. “It was of course not a proper investigation, but only an imitation of one.”

BLAME GOES ‘STRAIGHT TO THE TOP’

The Kremlin, as it did when journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in 2006, has downplayed Nemtsov’s significance, calling his killing a “provocation” designed to cause problems for the Russian authorities.

Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said after the verdict it was up to investigators to decide if further examination of the case was necessary.

Before the verdict, Peskov had said it was “an extraordinarily complex case” and that it sometimes took years to identify and arrest the masterminds in such cases.

Investigators have said they are still seeking a man they suspect of having helped organize the killing. Nemtsova said she saw no willingness on the authorities’ part to pursue the case.

Her father, a former deputy prime minister who was once tipped to succeed Boris Yeltsin as president, a job Putin got, had authored an excoriating report on Putin’s rule. Shortly before he was killed, he had been working on a report examining the Russian military’s role in Ukraine.

Kremlin critics say the trial was flawed. The authorities never made public any CCTV footage of the killing despite it taking place in sight of the Kremlin’s walls.

A murder weapon was never recovered, and many witnesses were never summoned. One of the main suspects was also killed - in unclear circumstances - when authorities tried to detain him in Chechnya.

Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for Nemtsova, said during the trial that Nemtsov had been a major irritant to the authorities.

“We are absolutely convinced, considering how the murder was organized and carried out, that the roots of the killing go straight to top Russian and Chechen officials,” she said.

Ilya Yashin, Nemtsov’s one-time spokesman, said he and other supporters would now try to pressure the authorities into pursuing the people who were really behind the murder.

Nemtsov’s memory is kept alive in central Moscow where, for more than 700 days and nights, a small group of anti-Kremlin activists has guarded a makeshift memorial to him on the bridge opposite Moscow’s Red Square where he was gunned down.

The city authorities have dismantled the memorial several times, but each time activists have rebuilt it.

Slideshow (4 Images)

The five Chechen men will be sentenced by the court at a later date. A lawyer for at least one of them said he would appeal.

Nemtsova said she would not rest until the case was solved.

“We will fight on to find out the full truth using all means at our disposal,” she said.</s>MOSCOW — A Russian jury said on Thursday that five men suspected of killing opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were guilty.

But lawyers for Nemtsov's family and government critics claim the true organizers behind his death were not found during the nine month-long trial. Nemtsov was brazenly killed in February 2015 just meters away from the vermilion walls of the Kremlin.

With a mop of curly hair and an athletic build, Nemtsov served as deputy prime minister in the late 1990s to then-ailing President Boris Yeltsin. He was widely considered at the time to be the leader's successor.

One of the most recognizable leaders of Russia’s marginalized and fractured Liberal Democrats, Nemtsov criticized Putin in a series of analytical reports detailing the president's alleged corruption and his coterie of former security agents and personal friends who now serve as top government officials or heads of major companies.

All five defendants were ethnic Chechens with ties to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed strongman. Nemtsov, along with human rights groups and critics, have for years accused Kadyrov of pocketing government funds, extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture of his opponents.

The jury also found them guilty of illegal possession of firearms. A judge will deliver a verdict after deliberation. The defendants face at least eight years in jail.

One more suspected accomplice was killed in Chechnya while being detained, and another suspected organizer is still at large.

All the defendants pleaded not guilty and said their earlier testimony, in which they confessed to organizing or aiding in the killing of Nemtsov, was extracted under pressure.

The suspected killer, a decorated officer named Zaur Dadayev who fought against Chechen separatists, was arrested days after the 2015 slaying. He told investigators in March 2015 that he had shot Nemtsov for “anti-Islamic statements.”

Kadyrov called Dadayev a “true patriot of Russia” and claimed that "one has to look for the traces of the crime not in Chechnya, but in Ukraine and then further, in the USA," according to his 2015 Instagram post. He claimed that the slaying was organized by a former Chechen separatist who fought against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

Investigators said that another decorated Chechen officer named Ruslan Mukhudinov, along with “other unidentified persons,” allegedly hired the defendants in September 2014 and paid them “at least 15 million rubles” ($240,000).

The defendants purchased two cars, burner phones and a pistol, and followed Nemtsov for about six months, tracking his whereabouts and comments in media reports and social networking pages, investigators said.

Related: Boris Nemtsov’s Murder May Have Been Provocation: Russian Officials

On Feb. 28, 2015, the defendants spent some 10 hours in a car parked outside Nemtsov’s apartment in central Moscow. They drove after him to a restaurant near the Kremlin, where Nemtsov and his companion, a Ukrainian model, had dinner. As the two walked to cross the Moskva river, Dadayev shot Nemtsov in the back six times, killing the 55-year-old politician on the spot, investigators said.

Nemtsov family’s lawyers said that the court failed to present surveillance footage from dozens of cameras that operate around the Kremlin 24/7. The court also ignored their requests to summon Kadyrov as a witness.

For years before his killing, Nemtsov was lambasted on Kremlin-controlled television networks, which called him a “Western agent” and claimed he received money from the U.S. to organize a coup against Putin.

Putin has described the killing as a "provocation," and told Nemtsov's septuagenarian mother the killers would be found and punished.

But Moscow authorities refused to rename the bridge where Nemtsov was killed after him and they routinely send janitors there late at night to remove flowers, candles and his portraits.</s>A Russian jury on Thursday convicted five men — a gunman and four purported accomplices — in the 2015 murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zaur Dadayev, 34, was found guilty of fatally shooting Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, who was walking with a girlfriend on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin on the evening of Feb. 27, 2015.

Dadayev, a former officer in the security forces of Chechnya’s leader, and the four other defendants, all Chechens, were allegedly promised $250,000 to kill Nemtsov, who had urged in a radio interview that protesters turn out for a weekend rally targeting Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Nemtsov, 56, had also warned that too much power in the hands of one man would “end in catastrophe," a not too subtle reference to Putin.

The brothers Anzor Gubashev and Shagid Gubashev, along with Ramzan Bakhayev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, were convicted as accomplices in the killing. A sixth man, Beslan Shabanov, died at the time of his arrest, apparently with a grenade.

The five all denied involvement in the killing. Dadaev purportedly confessed at one point but later retracted it, saying he had been tortured.

Nemtsov’s allies and family have criticized Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates high-profile crimes, for stopping short of examining the possible role of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and top Chechen officers in the killing.

Nemtsov’s eldest daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova, said in a Facebook post after the verdict was announced that “the case remains unsolved.”

“Investigators and the court clearly did not want to uncover the truth about this crime,” Nemstova said, pointing to the fact that no high-profile Chechen officials were questioned. “There was only one task: find the triggerman and hold a trial. They did just that. But we will continue to fight for the truth by any means we have.”

The heavily Muslim Chechen Republic, also known as Chechnya, is a federal subject of Russia in the North Caucasus region, has been a battleground between militants secessionists and Russian forces.

Nemtsov’s family has petitioned investigators to look into Kadyrov’s possible involvement and to question Ruslan Geremeyev, commander of the police unit in which Dadayev served.

The police commander was summoned to testify, but he failed to show up. Investigators told the court last year that they visited Geremeyev’s property in Chechnya but “no one opened the door.”

According to the Russian media, Dadaev initially told prosecutors that he shot Nemtsov with his left hand, although the defendant — who alleged he was tortured into confessing — and his lawyer later insisted he is right-handed.

Dadaev, along with his co-conspirators, monitored Nemtsov's movements on the night he was killed, prosecutors said. They said Dadaev had purchased the car seen on video cameras near the scene at the time. Authorities, however, said surveillance cameras that could have caught the actually killing were not working properly that evening.

Although the motive of the killing was never spelled out, prosecutors at one point alleged that Dadaev had confessed to shooting of Nemtsov for purportedly urging the publication of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. One month earlier, militants had attacked the magazine's office in Paris over the cartoons, killing 12 people.

Such a purported motive, however, was not part of the indictment, nor had Nemtsov in fact urged the publication of the cartoons, Russian media reported.

The investigation showed the murder was ordered and masterminded by an officer of Chechnya's Sever battalion, Ruslan Mukhutdinov, who purportedly went into hiding in the United Arab Emirates, according to Novaya Gazeta.

Vadim Prokhorov, the Nemtsov family's lawyer, rejected the findings of the investigation, arguing that Mukhutdinov was unable to have ordered and masterminded the killing, Moscow Times reported. The lawyer instead alleged that the crime was ordered by high-"profile people," Interfax reported.

Following Thursday's verdict, Prokhorov said the brains behind the plot have not been identified.

"After today’s verdict, the investigation has no other variants but to search for the crime’s masterminds and organizers," he said, according to the TASS news agency.

Ilya Yashin, a close Nemtsov ally, welcomed the convictions in a Facebook post. He said that having the architect of Nemtsov’s death never identified sends a chilling message to Russian opposition figures.

The Russian Investigative Committee will continue its probe into the Nemtsov killing, Interfax reported Thursday.</s>Opposition leader's supporters welcome verdict, but say case remains unsolved because masterminds has not been caught.

A Russian jury has found five men guilty of organising and carrying out the contract killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov two years ago, after a trial his allies say failed to unmask the masterminds.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and fierce Kremlin critic, was gunned down in central Moscow as he walked home with his girlfriend late in the evening of February 27, 2015.



The murder just steps from the Kremlin in the Russian capital was the most high-profile political killing in the capital since President Vladimir Putin rose to power some 17 years ago.

The 12-person jury ruled after the third day of deliberations that defendants Zaur Dadayev, Shadid and Anzor Gubashev, Temirlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev - all ethnic Chechens from Russia's volatile North Caucasus - carried out the hit as part of an organised gang.

Dadayev, a former officer in an interior ministry battalion in Chechnya, was found guilty of firing the four fatal shots. 



The Gubashev brothers, Eskerkhanov and Bakhayev were found guilty of helping to organise and carry out the killing. 



The jury's decision was reached by majority vote after they first failed to come to unanimous decisions on the long list of charges against the defendants at the end of ten months of hearings.

Nemtsov's supporters welcomed the verdict, but said Dadayev and the others were low-level operatives. The case remained unsolved, they said, because those who had ordered, financed and organised the hit had not been caught.

"It's the biggest crime of the century and yet they haven't identified the real organisers or those who ordered it," Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for the late politician's daughter, told reporters after the verdict.

"The Russian government was not prepared to look into the entourage of [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov," he said, despite his view that one of the masterminds was a close associate of Chechnya's president.

Zhanna Nemtsova, the slain politician's daughter, has repeatedly said she wanted Kremlin-backed Kadyrov, to be questioned about what he knew about the case.

Kadyrov has previously praised Dadayev, the trigger man, as a "true patriot of Russia", referring to his military service.

But Kadyrov, who has denied allegations he was personally involved, never appeared before the court.

"The criticism that a lot of people are making, not just Nemtsov’s family, is that this crime really couldn't have been okayed and carried our without some higher-level green light, certainly in the Chechen Republic," Moscow-based journalist Fred Weir said.

"So this all remains hanging, but as far as the five low-level guys, the actual small fry who carried out the crime are concerned, they have been found guilty and not one of them is able for leniency."</s>A Russian jury convicted five men Thursday in the murder of Russian opposition leader and prominent Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, concluding a trial Nemtsov’s family has criticized as being insufficient.

Nemtsov, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was killed while walking near the Kremlin in February 2015, just days before he was expected to help lead a major rally in Moscow opposing Russia’s war with Ukraine. The 55-year-old’s death shocked members of the country’s political opposition, which turned out in the tens of thousands to mourn his death.

Zaur Dadayev, a native of Russia’s North Caucasus region and a former Chechen soldier, was found guilty of shooting Nemtsov. Four other people, also Chechens, were convicted as accomplices: Anzor Gubashev, Shadid Gubashev, Khamzat Bakhayev, and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov. During the trial, the prosecution argued the men coordinated Nemtsov’s murder in exchange for 15 million rubles ($250,000), though investigators say they still don’t know who ordered the assassination. Dadayev originally confessed to the shooting, but later recanted, claiming he was tortured into giving the confession. All of the men have since maintained their innocence. Each faces between eight years to life in prison.

A sixth suspect, Beslan Shavanov, blew himself up during a standoff with authorities in Grozny, the Chechen capital. As the Moscow Times reports, prosecutors are still looking into Ruslan Mukhudinov, a Chechen officer, for allegedly ordering the assassination. He has been at large since November 2015.

In response to Nemtsov’s murder, Putin vowed to make sure the perpetrators would “get the punishment they deserve,” reportedly granting the country’s intelligence agency unusually wide license to go after those responsible. But Nemtsov’s family said this promise was not met. “It’s the biggest crime of the century and yet they haven’t identified the real organizers of those who ordered it,” Vadim Prokhorov, the family’s lawyer, told reporters after the verdict, adding that the government failed to investigate Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, who the family has long accused of being involved. Nemtsov’s daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova, also criticized the outcome in a Facebook post, adding that “the case remains unsolved.”

Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, said authorities would continue to investigate who ordered Nemtsov’s murder, noting that “sometimes such processes take years.”</s>A Moscow jury has found five men guilty of involvement in the murder of the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was shot late at night in 2015 as he was walking across a bridge outside the Kremlin.

Russian news agencies said a jury at a Moscow court on Thursday found the suspected gunman, a former officer in the security forces of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov guilty of murdering Nemtsov. Four other men were found guilty of involvement in the killing.

The assassination sent shockwaves through the Russian opposition.

Nemtsov’s allies have criticised the investigators for stopping short of studying a possible role of top Chechen officers and Kadyrov himself in the killing.

More to follow soon...</s>A court on Thursday convicted five men of murdering Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, more than two years after he was shot dead near the Kremlin.

Nemtsov, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was murdered in 2015 as he walked across a bridge in the heart of Moscow after dining with his girlfriend.

Aged 55, he had been working on a report examining Russia’s role in Ukraine.

After more than eight months of hearings, a jury trial on Thursday convicted five men of his murder, including the man prosecutors said pulled the trigger, Zaur Dadayev, a former soldier in Chechnya.

It said the four others had acted as his accomplices and that the group had been promised a reward of 15 million rubles ($253,889.59) for the high-profile assassination.</s>MOSCOW, June 29 (Reuters) - A court on Thursday convicted five men of murdering Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, more than two years after he was shot dead near the Kremlin.

Nemtsov, one of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics, was murdered in 2015 as he walked across a bridge in the heart of Moscow after dining with his girlfriend. Aged 55, he had been working on a report examining Russia's role in Ukraine. His killing sent a chill through opposition circles.

After more than eight months of hearings, a jury trial convicted five men of his murder on Thursday, including the man prosecutors said pulled the trigger, Zaur Dadayev, a former soldier in Chechnya.

It said the four others had acted as his accomplices and that the group had been promised a bounty of 15 million roubles ($253,889.59) for the high-profile assassination. ($1 = 59.0808 roubles) (Reporting by Svetlana Reiter; Additional reporting by Alexander Winning; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)</s>Five men accused of carrying out the 2015 killing of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, a former first deputy prime minister, have been found guilty.

A jury at Moscow's military court on June 29 brought in the verdicts after two days of deliberations. The jury failed to reach a unanimous decision, but majorities voted in favor of conviction.

The jurors did not recommend leniency for any of the defendants.

After the jury finished reading its decision, the judge adjourned the proceedings until July 4.

Defense lawyer Artyom Sarbashev told journalists after the hearing that all five defendants would appeal the convictions.

Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer representing Nemtsov's family, said his clients were in general agreement with the jury's findings but urged authorities to continue "to search for the crime's masterminds and organizers."

The five defendants -- Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shagit Gubashev, Khamzat Bakhayev, and Tamerlain Eskerkhanov – are all from Russia's North Caucasus republic of Chechnya and all were charged with carrying out a murder for hire.

Prosecutors said Dadayev, a former soldier in Chechnya's notorious Sever battalion, fired the fatal shots, and Anzor Gubashev drove the getaway vehicle. The other three defendants helped plan the murder and helped the others hide.

Prosecutors said the men committed the crime because they were promised 15 million rubles ($254,000).

Meanwhile, Russia's Investigative Committee said on June 29 that a sixth man charged in absentia in a separate criminal case with organizing the killing -- former Chechen military driver Ruslan Mukhudinov -- is being sought by police.

Nemtsov's family thinks the murder was ordered by Mukhudinov's boss, Ruslan Germeyev, the deputy commander of the Sever battalion.

Investigators told the court that they went to Germeyev's home in Chechnya to question him, "but no one opened the door."

All five defendants pleaded not guilty, a position they reaffirmed in their closing statements on June 21.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it is up to the Investigative Committee to determine if further legal action is required in connection with the case.

"This is not a matter for the Kremlin," Peskov said.

Nemtsov, who was a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a critic of the Kremlin-installed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot in the back on a Moscow bridge just outside the Kremlin on the night of February 28, 2105.

In an interview with VOA on June 29, Nemtsov's daughter Zhanna Nemtsova said the trial failed to name the organizers of the crime or their motive.

"The investigators and then the court did everything possible to prevent the establishment of a motive because it was obvious to everyone in Russia, as well as to people in Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world that this was a political murder," Nemtsova said.

Nemtsova also criticized Putin for not compelling Kadyrov to testify at the trial.

"I suspect that Vladimir Putin knows much more than I do about the circumstances of this murder and that he has a complete picture of it," she said.

With reporting by the BBC, AP, Gazeta.ru, VOA, and DW</s>MOSCOW: A Russian jury on Thursday found all five defendants guilty of organising and carrying out the contract killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, after a trial his allies say failed to unmask the masterminds.

Former deputy prime minister Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down just metres from the Kremlin as he walked home with his girlfriend late on the evening of February 27, 2015.

The brazen murder in central Moscow was the most high-profile political killing in Russia since Putin rose to power some 17 years ago, but Nemtsov’s family insists authorities refused to probe people close to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who they suspect ordered the hit.

The 12-person jury ruled on its third day of deliberations that defendants Zaur Dadayev, Shadid and Anzor Gubashev, Temirlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev — all ethnic Chechens from Russia’s volatile North Caucasus — carried out the hit as a gang for some $250,000.

Dadayev — a former officer in an interior ministry battalion in Chechnya — was found guilty of firing the four fatal shots.

The Gubashev brothers, Eskerkhanov and Bakhayev were found guilty of being accomplices.

The jury’s decision was reached by majority vote after they first failed to reach unanimous decisions on the long list of charges against the defendants at the end of ten months of hearings.

The suspects have always denied they were involved in the killing and several retracted initial confessions they said were made under torture.

They are now facing lengthy jail terms, with the judge set to deliver sentencing after prosecutors set out their demands next week.

While the rulings provide some answers over the killing, Nemtsov’s family is adamant that those who ordered the charismatic politician’s death have not been identified.

Nemtsov’s daughter Zhanna Nemtsova wrote that the case remained “unsolved” even though she agreed that all of the accused, with the exception of Bakhayev, were involved.

“This was not a complete investigation but only an imitation,” she posted on Facebook.

“In two years… they could not find the organiser and mastermind of the murder,” her lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said. “It’s a complete fiasco.”

Nemtsov’s allies say the evidence clearly shows that those close to Kremlin-loyal Chechen strongman Kadyrov — or Kadyrov himself — were actually behind the assassination.

The Chechen leader — who rules his conflict-scarred region with an iron fist — has denied all involvement and defended some of the accused.

Nemtsov’s family tried and failed to get Kadyrov and some of his top lieutenants, including Dadayev’s commander Ruslan Geremeev, questioned.

Investigators only named Geremeev’s driver Ruslan Mukhudinov as an organiser and said he offered the suspects 15 million rubles (about $250,000 or 220,000 euros at current rates) for the murder.

Mukhudinov has since fled and investigators said after the verdict that the case against him was still ongoing.

No real motive has ever been offered by authorities as to why the hit on Nemtsov was ordered.

Once one of Russia’s most popular politicians, liberal reformer Nemtsov was at one stage seen as a possible successor to former president Boris Yeltsin.

After initially backing Putin when he came to power, Nemtsov soon became one of his fiercest critics. But as the ex-KGB officer cracked down on dissent, Russia’s opposition — and Nemtsov along with it — became increasingly marginal figures.

At the time of his death aged 55, Nemtsov was probing official Russian involvement in the bloody conflict in east Ukraine. Some supporters insist he was killed to stop his political activities.

The Kremlin called his shooting a “provocation” and spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was for investigators to decide now if the case is at an end.

The murder and subsequent trial have strong echoes of a string of earlier high-profile assassinations that Kremlin critics say have been left unsolved, including the 2006 shooting of anti-Putin journalist Anna Politkovskaya in her Moscow apartment building.

Eventually five men — including four members of the same Chechen family — were found guilty of the murder, but over a decade later Politkovskaya’s family and former colleagues remain convinced the masterminds have not been brought to justice.
A jury trial convicts five individuals accused of working together to assassinate Boris Nemtsov. These individuals had been promised a bounty of 15 million Russian rubles. Critics say the original financiers and organizers of the crime have not been identified.