Moscow, March 11 (IANS) One of the suspects in the assassination of Russian opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov on Tuesday appealed against his arrest, according to media reports.
“We have challenged the arrest of my client,” the lawyer of one of the suspects, Ramzat Bakhayev, was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.
Anna Fadeyeva, press secretary of the Basmanny District Court in Moscow, confirmed that the appeal was received.
“In the appeal, the lawyer asks to cancel the arrest of Bakhayev and release him,” she said, adding that the other suspects in the case had not filed similar appeals.
Russian authorities confirmed on Monday to have detained two more suspects in connection with Nemtsov’s assassination. With the latest arrests, the number of people detained in connection with Nemtsov’s assassination reached seven, according to an earlier Xinhua report. A Moscow court had ruled on Sunday to formally arrest five suspects.
One of the detainees — Zaur Dadayev — a former member of the Chechen Special Forces had on Sunday confessed of being the sole actor behind Nemtsov’s murder.
Russian security agencies were reported to be also investigating the possibility of the involvement of foreign forces, as they had found “foreign contacts of the Nemtsov murder suspects”.
Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead at around midnight on February 27 near the Kremlin in the heart of the Russian capital Moscow, while he was strolling with Ukrainian model Anna Duritskaya.
Putin had vowed to do everything to bring those responsible for the death of Nemtsov to justice.