3 Men Acquitted in Murder of Russian Journalist

New York Times, By Ellen Barry & Michael Schwartz, February 19

MOSCOW — A Moscow jury ruled unanimously on Thursday to acquit three men in the 2006 murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, frustrating state prosecutors’ hopes of putting to rest a case that provoked international outrage and cast a shadow over Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

Ms. Politkovskaya was a strident critic of the Kremlin, and her killing underlined the shrinking freedom allowed dissenters in Russian society. Investigators and colleagues concluded that someone had ordered her death to silence her, and some suspected the hand of state officials in the crime.

But the three men who were tried on murder charges in a cramped courtroom this winter were peripheral figures: two shaggy-haired young Chechen brothers accused of acting as a lookout and a driver for the suspected triggerman, who has never been arrested, and a former police investigator accused of organizing logistics for the killing.

By skirting the single most important question — who ordered the killing of Ms. Politkovskaya — the proceedings made the case more corrosive.

“If the decision had been otherwise, it would mean that the real criminals, who are somewhere among us, could continue what they were doing,” said Murad Musayev, the lawyer defending Dzhabrail Makhmudov, one of the Chechen brothers. “The only way to stop these crimes is to find the real criminals.”

[...]

Thursday’s acquittal dims hopes that such crimes will be vigorously investigated, said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau.

“The fact that no one at all has been held accountable for this murder sends a very clear message to potential perpetrators: You can do it, and you can get away with it,” she said. “Brazen killings have become almost routine in the Russian Federation.”

Reports say Russia annuls verdicts in Politkovskaya's murder trial
Posted: 25 June 2009 2118 hrs

MOSCOW : Russia's supreme court on Thursday annulled innocent verdicts handed in February to all suspects in the trial in the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, news agencies reported.

The court accepted a complaint brought by the prosecution which had demanded a cancellation of the verdicts and a new investigation.

A jury in February acquitted four men, none of whom had in the first place been charged with shooting dead the reporter nor ordering the apparent contract killing in her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006.

Rights groups have criticised Russia's failure to bring to justice the killers of Politkovskaya, who had been highly critical of Russia's strongman, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Three suspects had been charged with assisting the murder while another was accused of extortion in another aspect of the case.