THE murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya had obtained video evidence that purported to link Ramzan Kadyrov, the 30-year-old prime minister of Chechnya, to the kidnapping of two civilians.

The grainy footage, shot on a mobile phone, shows a man resembling Kadyrov — President Vladimir Putin’s strongman in the bombed-out republic — looking on as a group of people in camouflage jackets bundle the civilians into the boot of a car.

One victim is seen resisting and is forced into the boot by the men, who were described by Politkovskaya as members of the Kadyrovtsy, the prime minister’s ruthless militia. The cameraman can be heard apparently identifying Kadyrov on the film. The fate of the abducted men is unknown.

Politkovskaya, Russia’s most prominent investigative journalist, who was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block last weekend, never tired of accusing Kadyrov and his men of kidnapping, torture and murder. Colleagues believe the video may contain clues to her own killing.

She had sent it to the Russian prosecutor’s office and hoped it would lead to action against Kadyrov, whose father Ahmad was president until his assassination in 2004.

On October 5, Politkovskaya said on Radio Liberty in her last interview that she wanted to see him put on trial. “Kadyrov is a Stalin of our times,” she said. “Kadyrov is a coward armed to the teeth and surrounded by security guards . . . I dream of him some day sitting in the dock, in a trial that meets the strictest legal standards, with all his crimes listed.” She added that she would give evidence against him.

The prosecutor’s office refused to comment on its inquiries into Kadyrov or its investigation into the murder of Politkovskaya, 48.

Kadyrov, a keen boxer who keeps a pet tiger, has always denied any wrongdoing and dismissed suggestions in the Russian press last week that one of his supporters may have been responsible for the murder. “Chechens don’t kill women,” he said. “Women are sacred to us. I have never killed a woman. I think the people who ordered her killing did it to blacken my name.” He added mysteriously that Politkovskaya’s work “helped me”.

Last week Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya’s paper, published the article she was writing on the day she was shot. It detailed evidence of torture by police in Chechnya.

Politkovskaya, a divorced mother of two whose reports made her one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics, was the 13th journalist to be killed since Putin came to power six years ago. Hardly any of the murders have been solved and few in Russia believe the authorities will catch Politkovskaya’s killer. To the outrage of many, the Kremlin failed to send a representative to her funeral.

Signalling their mistrust of the authorities, staff at Novaya Gazeta have vowed to carry out their own investigation. Five of her colleagues will work solely on trying to solve the crime. Alexander Lebedev, a Russian billionaire and one of the paper’s shareholders, has offered a £500,000 reward for information leading to the culprit’s arrest.

Three main lines of inquiry have emerged. Police and the Novaya Gazeta team will seek to establish whether the killing is connected with a Kadyrov supporter or, as claimed by the Chechen prime minister, by someone seeking to damage him.

Russian ultra-nationalists, who despised Politkovskaya for her attacks on the Kremlin, are also suspected. Last week it emerged that she had been on a hitlist compiled by a right-wing group calling itself Russia’s Will. The list was posted on the internet with an appeal to “patriots” to kill “Russia’s enemies”.

A third line of inquiry will examine whether Politkovskaya was murdered by Russians she accused of war crimes in Chechnya. In 2001 she began a series of articles accusing a police unit from Siberia of complicity in the kidnapping, torture and murder of ordinary Chechens. In particular she accused Sergei Lapin, an officer known as “the Cadet”, of torture.

“We won’t give up until her killers are in jail,” vowed Dmitry Muratov, Novaya Gazeta’s editor. “I wanted her to write about other subjects, but people kept coming to her with evidence of crimes. There was a constant queue of grieving people outside her office. People came to her because she was unique. While there is a Novaya Gazeta, her murderers won’t sleep soundly.”

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