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 The two were among five men, all ethnic Chechens, frogmarched into
a Moscow courtroom on Sunday, forced by masked security officers
gripping their bound arms to walk doubled over, a Reuters reporter
at the court said.
The men stood in metal cages as television crews were ushered in to
film them.
Nemtsov was shot dead on the night of Feb. 27 within sight of the
Kremlin walls, in the most high-profile killing of an opposition
figure in the 15 years that President Vladimir Putin has been in
power.
Judge Natalia Mushnikova ordered that all five men should remain in
custody.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally, said the former
policeman, Zaur Dadayev, was a pious Muslim who had been angered by
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in the French satirical newspaper
Charlie Hebdo.
Nemtsov, a liberal, had defended the cartoons after Islamist gunmen
killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris in January.
Russian investigators said last week they were looking into the
possibility that Islamist militants had killed Nemtsov.
 "All who know Zaur confirm that he is a deep believer and also that
he, like all Muslims, was shocked by the activities of Charlie and
comments in support of printing the cartoons," Kadyrov wrote on his
Instagram account.
Kadyrov described Dadayev as "a true patriot of Russia" who had
received several medals for bravery but had subsequently resigned
from his interior ministry regiment for reasons the Chechen leader
said were unclear.
There have been cases in the past where employees of Russian law
enforcement agencies have been prosecuted after moonlighting for
organized crime groups.
CONFESSION
"Dadayev's involvement in committing this crime is confirmed by,
apart from his own confession, the totality of evidence gathered as
part of this criminal case," Mushnikova told Sunday's court hearing.
The other man charged is Anzor Gubashev. The three other suspects
are his brother Shagid Gubashev, Ramzan Bakhayev and Tamerlan
Eskerkhanov. Previously, investigators said they only had two
suspects in custody.
Separately, Russia's Interfax news agency, quoting a Chechen law
enforcement source, said a man killed in a standoff with police in
the Chechen capital Grozny late on Saturday had also been wanted by
police in connection with Nemtsov's killing.
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When police arrived at an apartment block, the man threw one grenade
at officers and then blew himself up with a second, Interfax said.
Some associates of Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime
minister who became a Putin critic, say the Kremlin stands to gain
from his death. Russian officials deny involvement and Putin has
condemned the killing.
The court hearings on Sunday were given extensive coverage on
state-controlled media, and presented as proof the authorities were
conducting a thorough investigation - not the cover-up some of
Nemtsov's friends say they anticipate.
But associates of Nemtsov say they will not be satisfied unless
prosecutors track down whoever orchestrated the killing, rather than
just the people who pulled the trigger.
There was no word from investigators on who the suspects were
alleged to have been working for.
Several other high-profile killings in Russia, including the 2006
shooting of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, have been attributed to
gunmen from Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus region,
while those who ordered the crimes were never firmly identified.
Chechnya has seen violent separatist insurgencies over the past two
decades. It is now firmly under the control of Kadyrov, a former
rebel who changed sides and pledges loyalty to Putin.
(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, editing by Gareth Jones)
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