Despite the court appearances, neither the court nor Russian law enforcement agencies presented coherent pictures of the case thus far, including the roles played by the suspects or any motive they might have had.
Mr. Dadayev and Mr. Gubashev, whose arrests were announced on Saturday by Russia’s top law enforcement official, are believed to be the two directly involved in fatally shooting Mr. Nemtsov on Feb. 27.
The three other suspects who appeared in court on Sunday, accused of being accomplices, were Mr. Gubashev’s younger brother, Shagid, a truck driver; Khamzad Bakhaev; and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, the official Tass news agency reported. All five were jailed for up to two months.
The main question many Russians want answered is who ordered the brazen assassination of Mr. Nemtsov, 55, a former deputy prime minister turned opposition leader. Since the shooting took place within sight of the Kremlin, among the most heavily guarded sites in Moscow, opposition figures have accused the government of complicity, which it has denied. The Kremlin had previously suggested that the killing was the work of foreign spy agencies, but President Vladimir V. Putin later said it was politically motivated.
Mr. Nemtsov was one of the government’s most persistent critics and was due to publish a report that he said would reveal the involvement of the Russian military in the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has called Russians fighting in Ukraine “volunteers.”
Given the intense national interest in the case, the arrival of the men in court was broadcast on state television. Uniformed security agents wearing black balaclavas frog-marched the suspects, bent over and wearing handcuffs, into the courthouse. Security forces established a tight cordon around it.
A sixth suspect blew himself up with a hand grenade on Saturday night as the police closed in on his apartment in the southern city of Grozny, the capital of the Republic of Chechnya, the Interfax news agency reported.
The arrests and the police activity were centered in the troubled North Caucasus, where Russia has battled Islamic insurgents since 1994. At some point, Mr. Dadayev was the deputy commander of the North battalion of Interior Ministry troops in Chechnya, state-run news agencies reported, but it was not clear if he still held that post. He even won a commendation for bravery, according to Caucasian Knot, a website that focuses on news from the region.
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The fact that Mr. Dadayev served in a force founded by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and the man given a Kremlin mandate to run Chechnya as he liked after stamping out the insurgency, suggests that the plot was purely domestic, said Grigory S. Shvedov, the editor in chief of Caucasian Knot.
“More security people are working in Chechnya than in any other region in Russia,” Mr. Shvedov said in an interview. “Why would anyone try to recruit a killer who works for Kadyrov? It would be long and complicated.”
Albert Barakhoev, the acting head of the Security Council in Ingushetia, a region that borders Chechnya, was quoted by the state-run news agencies, Tass and RIA Novosti, as saying the arrests took place there.
The two main suspects, Mr. Dadayev and Mr. Gubashev, are between 30 and 35, he said, and have been in Moscow for years. Mr. Gubashev had worked for a private security company in Moscow as a guard in a hypermarket, Mr. Barakhoev said.
Ajmani Dadayev, the mother of Mr. Dadayev, told state television that the two Gubashev brothers were her nephews.
The Interfax news agency, quoting an unidentified source, said the police had been able to trace the first two men through cellphone activity around the location of the killing and from DNA evidence found in the suspected getaway car.
There have been a series of high-profile murders of government critics in Russia over the past two decades in which the mastermind was never identified.
Last June, for example, Moscow’s highest criminal court sentenced five men from the North Caucasus to prison for the 2006 murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a scathing critic of Kremlin policies in Chechnya and of Mr. Kadyrov. But her supporters say the identity of who ordered her killing remains unsolved.
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