MOSCOW, April 1 (RAPSI) – Zaur Dadayev has incriminated himself and implicated the other suspects in the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in late February, an Investigative Committee representative said  on Wednesday at a hearing on a complaint against the arrest of one of the suspects, Khamzat Bakhayev,  in the Moscow City Court.

“Bakhayev’s involvement in the crime has been reaffirmed by Zaur Dadayev’s testimony,” the investigator said.

The Investigative Committee has appealed to the court to not release Bakhayev, whose attorneys argue that he has health problems and is the father of underage children.Moreover, more severe charges have been brought against Bakhayev, who was initially charged under Part 2 of Article 222 (illegal weapons possession, storage and sale), which stipulates penalties of up to six years in prison. Crimes under Part 3 of the same article (the above crimes committed by an organized group) are punishable with up to eight.

Bakhayev has also been charged under Article 105 (murder by contract) and hence could be sentenced to life imprisonment.However, the Moscow City Court overturned a lower court’s ruling to detain Bakhayev.  He will remain in jail until April 7.  In this period, the Basmanny District court must reargue the issue.

A decision to detain another suspect, Shadid Gubashev, will be reconsidered too.

Nemtsov, co-chair of the Republican Party of Russia–People’s Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS) and former first deputy prime minister in the Yeltsin government, was fatally shot as he walked home with a girlfriend in central Moscow late on the night of February 27.

He joined the opposition in the 2000s.

Investigators are considering several motives for Nemtsov’s murder, including contract killing.

They have abandoned their initial theory, according to which Nemtsov was murdered for his statements about the shooting at the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It turned out that none of the suspects had met the opposition leader personally, most of them did not know anything about him, and, as their relatives said, none of them were devout believers.

Five men were arrested on suspicion of killing Nemtsov: Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shadid Gubashev, Khamzat Bakhayev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov.