“She was crying and she was saying Boris had been killed and he’s lying next to me,” her mother, Inna Duritskaya, said. “She was in such shock she couldn’t say anything else.”
Duritskaya said her daughter was questioned until 2 a.m. Monday. She said she fears authorities will implicate her daughter in the death because they have threatened to take her attorney away from her.
The model is now staying at the apartment of an aide to Nemtsov, under constant police guard.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has requested that Duritskaya be allowed to return to Ukraine, the Russian news agency TASS said.
But Russian authorities said because Duritskaya is a key witness, “the investigative committee has all grounds to further question her as part of the investigation.”
The surprising relationship
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Business magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused Putin of corruption and spent 10 years in prison and labor camps.
And before his death, Nemtsov had been arrested several times for speaking against Putin’s government.
Kasparov, chairman of the Human Rights Foundation’s International Council, suggested the killing was linked to the Kremlin’s own insecurity.
“If you are popular your critics don’t have to be shot down in front of the Kremlin,” Kasparov tweeted. “Putin is just food in a prison, eat it or starve.”
If you are popular your critics don't have to be shot down in front of the Kremlin. Putin is just food in a prison, eat it or starve.
Diana Magnay reported from Kiev, Ukraine; Holly Yan reported and wrote from Atlanta; and Alla Eshchenko reported from Moscow. CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen and Matthew Chance in Moscow contributed to this report.
