The dacha of Anna Politkovskaya, the Novaya Gazeta journalist murdered in 2006, was completely destroyed by fire today, says Ilya Politkovsky, Anna’s son.
“Our neighbours noticed that the house was on fire at four in the afternoon yesterday. The firefighters arrived at around five; both the house and the sauna building were completely destroyed. They said that the fire was about to spread to the neighbouring buildings,” says Politkovsky. He also noted that he had no idea what had caused the fire.
Source: Ilya Politkovsky
Vladimir Molchanov, a TV presenter and Politkovsky’s neighbour, reported that the witnesses were questioned by the police.
“There was some explosion up there at four o’clock. My wife started crying, so I ran outside and saw a horrible fire over the Politkovsky dacha. The flame must have been around eight metres tall. It was a horrible scene, and the wind was blowing towards my own house. The worst thing is that there were more explosions. We had no idea what may have caused them.
We were told that the asbestos roof cover was exploding. The pieces of asbestos went flying 50-70 metres away from the building. A fire brigade of three trucks was there in no time. When they arrived, the fire was closing in on my house, there was probably a distance of 50 cm. They started extinguishing the fire right away, and it lasted for three more hours. I guess they were using the river water to extinguish it. The firefighters did a great job, they saved many houses in the area… Nobody knows what caused the fire, although I have my own assumptions,” Molchanov said.
Source: Ilya Politkovsky
Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on 7 October 2006 in Moscow. She was shot four times at point blank range with a security headshot.
On 7 October 2021, the deadline for finding the criminals expired. The investigating authorities have not yet named the contractor’s name as well. Under Russian law, a person is released from criminal liability after 15 years, even after committing a grave crime.
The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the investigation into Politkovskaya’s murder was inefficient. The detectives, they say, made insufficient efforts towards the effective investigation.
