Boris Nemtsov funeral: Russia restricts foreign mourners
 Several EU politicians and Russia's opposition leader have been barred from attending the funeral of murdered Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. A Polish politician was denied a visa under existing Russian sanctions while a Latvian MEP was turned back after arriving at a Moscow airport. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was denied permission to leave jail, where he is serving a 15-day sentence. Mourners are filing past Nemtsov's coffin at Moscow's Sakharov centre. His funeral will be held in the afternoon (local time) at a Moscow cemetery, Troyekurovskoye, where murdered journalist Anna Politkovskayta was buried in 2006. Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was killed on a bridge near the Kremlin wall on Friday night. No arrests have been made and no clear motive has been established for the crime. New CCTV footage of the presumed getaway car has been released by a pro-Kremlin Russian news website, LifeNews. The video shows a vehicle making its way along Moscow streets but there is no close-up on the suspects inside. Friends and supporters of Boris Nemtsov are gathering in Moscow to say their final farewells. As they file past his coffin, the crowds will remember a man who was full of energy and life, who burst on to the political scene in the 1990s as a young reformer, who believed passionately in democracy. He was never afraid to speak his mind, to campaign and to criticise. In recent years he had been a fierce opponent of President Putin, exposing corruption and speaking out against the war in Ukraine. Boris Nemtsov was shot dead - with four bullets to the back - just beside the Kremlin. It should be one of the most secure spots in the country but more than three days on, police still do not have a suspect, the murder weapon or even the getaway car. There is nothing to explain for sure why Mr Nemtsov was killed and why, so demonstratively, right in the heart of Russia's capital. |
