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Murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya -
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A Moscow court acquitted three men accused of helping murder
Kremlin critic and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, leaving Russia's
most politically charged killing in years still unsolved.
The prosecution said it would appeal but the failure to secure a
single conviction for the crime, the most high-profile in a spate
of reporters' killings, raised questions about Russia's resolve to
protect freedom of speech.
"This failure amounts to a human rights crisis," Miklos Haraszti,"
media freedom representative for the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, a rights and security watchdog, said.
After a four-month trial, the jury forewoman said brothers
Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov were not guilty of acting as
accomplices in the murder and cleared former police officer Sergei
Khadzhikurbanov of organising the crime.
The three defendants hugged their relatives after the judge ordered
them released from the cage in the courtroom where they had been
held. Ibragim Makhmudov, from Russia's Muslim Chechnya region,
shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."
Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two who published scathing
exposes of official corruption and rights abuses, was shot dead
outside her apartment on October 7, 2006 after returning home from
the supermarket.
The verdict was the culmination of a two-year search for the
killers during which Politkovskaya's family and former colleagues
had accused prosecutors of bungling their investigation and failing
to track down the true culprits.
The main prosecutors suspect accused of pulling the trigger is on
the run and they have never identified the person who they believe
ordered Politkovskaya's murder.
"We demand, we need the real murderer, and we will achieve this,"
Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer for Politkovskaya's family, told
reporters outside the courtroom.
Kremlin under pressure
The Kremlin denied any involvement in Politkovskaya's murder,
saying it was an attempt to discredit Russia. Vladimir Putin,
Russian president at the time of the murder and now prime minister,
said Russia was committed to solving the crime.
But Western governments and rights groups voiced their anger and
demanded her killers be jailed. The crime fuelled accusations,
denied by the Kremlin, that under Putin democratic freedoms were
eroded and opposition journalists had to fear for their
lives.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia as
the world's third most dangerous place for reporters, after Iraq
and Algeria.
The Politkovskaya trial echoed the case of Paul Klebnikov, a US
journalist shot dead in Moscow in 2004. His suspected killers were
acquitted and attempted retrials have been delayed because some of
the defendants cannot be tracked down.
Former colleagues of Politkovskaya said before the verdict they
planned to pursue their own investigation into who was behind her
killing.
Lawyers for Politkovskaya's family complained during the trial that
detectives had not questioned Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin
leader of Chechyna.
Politkovskaya had accused Moscow's forces and their local allies of
committing human rights abuses during a campaign to stamp out an
insurgency. Kadyrov has repeatedly denied any involvement in
Politkovskaya's murder.
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