Yuri Shchekochikhin - Death

Death

Shchekochikhin died suddenly on 3 July 2003 after a 16 day mysterious illness . It was officially declared that he died from an allergic Lyell's syndrome. His medical treatment and his post-mortem took place at the Central Clinical Hospital, which is "tightly controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service because it treats top-ranking Russian officials". His relatives were denied an official medical report about the cause of his illness, and were forbidden to take specimens of his tissues for an independent medical investigation . Journalists of Novaya Gazeta managed to send his tissue specimens to "major foreign specialists". The experts did not reach any definite conclusion. This caused widespread speculation about the cause of his death, especially since another member of the Kovalev commission, Sergei Yushenkov, was assassinated the same year, and the legal counsel and investigator of the commission, Mikhail Trepashkin, was arrested by Russian authorities.

Some news reports drew parallels between the poisonings of Shchekochikhin, Alexander Litvinenko, and president Vladimir Putin’s former bodyguard Roman Tsepov, who died in a similar way in St. Petersburg in September 2004. Others noted Lecha Islamov, a Chechen rebel, who died in a Russian prison in 2004. “All three cases of poisoning – of Islamov, Shchekochikhin and Litvinenko – are united not only by the clinical picture, which is identical even in terms of the details, but also by the fact that the traces of the poisoners clearly point to one address: Moscow, Lubyanka (FSB headquarters),” according to Chechenpress report written by Zelimkhan Khadzhiev.