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. 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. 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. “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.
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.