Investigators of Politkovskaya's case left for Nizhnevartovsk

It looks like a dominant version has appeared in the murder case of Anna Politkovskaya, observer of the "Novaya Gazeta." The investigators suppose that former officers of the Interior Headquarters ("UVD") of the city of Nizhnevartovsk (Khanty-Mansiysk Area) may be accessorial to this crime, the "Commersant" reports.

Through the work of the journalist, one of them got 11 years of imprisonment, another two found themselves in international search, and six more - under suspicion. Last week, almost the full stuff of the detective-investigation team that is investigating Anna Politkovskaya's murder went to Nizhnevartovsk. The cause for the business trip of the investigators of the General Prosecutor's Office and detectives of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia was the operative information received from Khanty-Mansiysk militiamen.

Allegedly, someone of them had seen in the city his former colleagues - Major Alexander Prilepin and Lieutenant Colonel Valery Minin, who are today in international search for the crimes committed in Chechnya.

However, the investigators failed to hunt up the Major and Lieutenant Colonel and had to content themselves with interrogating the comrades and relatives of Prilepin and Minin. In 2002-2005, Anna Politkovskaya published a number of articles on disappearance in January 2001 of a resident of Grozny. According to the journalist, the Chechen was detained under a far-fetched pretext by the militiamen sent to Chechnya from the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area. The law-enforcement officers killed the young man and hid the body to cover the tracks.

Politkovskaya was the first to disclose the supposed culprits - Sergey Lapin, Senior Lieutenant of the Nizhnevartovsk UVD criminal search, and his commanders Major Prilepin and Lieutenant Colonel Minin, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.