Fifteen years after the assassination of Russian MP and human rights activist Galina Starovoitova, those who masterminded her death are yet to be brought to justice. Starovoitova was shot to death in the lobby of her apartment in St. Petersburg on 20th November 1998. Four men have been serving jail sentences since 2005 as perpetrators and accomplices in the murder with progress on identifying those actually behind the killing remaining slow. However, with the recent indictment of former MP MikhaiI Gluschenko as the man who organized Starovoitova’s murder, IPU trusts the Russian authorities will keep moving forward to finally resolve the case The Organization hopes the proceedings against Gluschenko, a businessman involved in large-scale criminal activities and sentenced in March to eight years in jail for extortion in another and unrelated case, will shed full light on the killing of Starovoitova. Her assassination was “politically motivated”, according to the St. Petersburg City Court that sentenced two men, intelligence officer Yuri Kolchin and Vitali Akishin, to 20 and 23.5 years in prison for pulling the trigger. Two other were found guilty of complicity, while three other suspects remain on the run. The court ascertained the murder had been committed by an organized group with the aim of halting Starovoitova's political activities. Considered as one of the symbols of Perestroika and the democratic movement, Starovoitova was co-chairwoman of the political party “Democratic Russia” and a well-known reformist politician and ethnic minority’s rights activist. She had denounced the existence of high-profile political corruption in St. Petersburg. Shortly before her death, she said that she was aware of the names of local politicians receiving bribes from the mafia and that she knew about the selling of a city council seat to a criminal group. IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, which has been following the case, will resume its examination at its next session on 13-17 January 2014 in Geneva in a bid to push for more information to be brought to light.
Fifteen years after the assassination of Russian MP and human rights activist Galina Starovoitova, those who masterminded her death are yet to be brought to justice. Starovoitova was shot to death in the lobby of her apartment in St. Petersburg on 20th November 1998. Four men have been serving jail sentences since 2005 as perpetrators and accomplices in the murder with progress on identifying those actually behind the killing remaining slow. However, with the recent indictment of former MP MikhaiI Gluschenko as the man who organized Starovoitova’s murder, IPU trusts the Russian authorities will keep moving forward to finally resolve the case The Organization hopes the proceedings against Gluschenko, a businessman involved in large-scale criminal activities and sentenced in March to eight years in jail for extortion in another and unrelated case, will shed full light on the killing of Starovoitova. Her assassination was “politically motivated”, according to the St. Petersburg City Court that sentenced two men, intelligence officer Yuri Kolchin and Vitali Akishin, to 20 and 23.5 years in prison for pulling the trigger. Two other were found guilty of complicity, while three other suspects remain on the run. The court ascertained the murder had been committed by an organized group with the aim of halting Starovoitova's political activities. Considered as one of the symbols of Perestroika and the democratic movement, Starovoitova was co-chairwoman of the political party “Democratic Russia” and a well-known reformist politician and ethnic minority’s rights activist. She had denounced the existence of high-profile political corruption in St. Petersburg. Shortly before her death, she said that she was aware of the names of local politicians receiving bribes from the mafia and that she knew about the selling of a city council seat to a criminal group. IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, which has been following the case, will resume its examination at its next session on 13-17 January 2014 in Geneva in a bid to push for more information to be brought to light.