Time USA - August 19, 2019

37

Dark My son’s father was killed while reporting

on Russian hired

guns. I’m still

waiting for justice

By Irina Gordienko

O

<

The author

in the Novaya

Gazeta office

in Moscow

on July 15

ne year ago, on july 30, 2018,

three Russian journalists were

shot to death and their bodies

left on the side of a road near

a conflict zone in central Africa. Their

names were Orkhan Dzhemal, a renowned

war correspondent; Alexander Rastorguev,

an award- winning filmmaker; and Kirill

Radchenko, their cameraman. The purpose

of their trip to the Central African Republic

was to film a documentary about the Wagner

Group, a Russian private military company

that has been active in several African coun-

tries in recent years and is believed to have

ties to the Russian military and the state.

Authorities in Moscow say the reporters

were killed in a random act of violence. It

was a robbery gone wrong, goes the offi-

cial line. But the colleagues of the victims

have investigated the murders indepen-

dently over the past year and have con-

cluded that known associates of the Wag-

ner Group were involved in the killings.

The victims’ friends and families have

pleaded with the authorities in Russia to

consider this evidence. Among the most

vocal has been Dzhemal’s ex-wife Irina

Gordienko, one of Russia’s best-known re-

porters. Ahead of the first anniversary of

the murders, Gordienko described her expe-

rience of dealing with Russian authorities

over the past year, not as a journalist but as

a person bereaved and looking for justice.

A version of her account was first pub-

lished in Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s

last independent newspapers, where Gor-

dienko is a correspondent. With her per-

mission and support, TIME is publishing

an edited translation of the piece as part of

its Guardians series on the escalating war

against the freedom of the press worldwide.

mosT of my 17 years as a journalisT

have been spent reporting on the tougher

parts of Russia, around the region known

as the Caucasus, which has lived through

many wars. I have seen dead bodies there,

and the signs of inhuman torture that the

heroes of my articles endured. I have writ-

ten a lot about prisons, some of which still

haunt me in my dreams. I’ve had to deal

with just about every sort of police officer,

investigator and prosecutor. But nothing

quite prepared me for that day one year

ago when Russian authorities summoned

me in relation to the murder of my former

husband, the journalist Orkhan Dzhemal.

Under the rules of Russian criminal

procedure, they had classified me as a vic-

tim in the case. I wasn’t the only one. Kirill

and Alexander both left behind grieving