Suspects acquitted of journalist’s murder

A JURY acquitted three men yesterday of playing minor roles in the murder of an investigative journalist whose killing underlined the risks that Kremlin critics can face in Russia. The main suspects in the case remained at large.

The unanimous not-guilty verdicts ended a three-month trial regarding the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose probing reports on atrocities in Chechnya and abuses by Russian authorities angered the government.

The trial was marred from the start by the absence of the suspected gunman and any alleged mastermind behind the politically charged October 2006 killing. Prosecutors vowed to appeal.

The judge said the defendants were free to go, and they burst out of a courtroom cage and embraced elated relatives.

Ethnic Chechen brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and a former Moscow police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were accused of helping organise and arrange Politkovskaya’s contract-style killing. All three were charged with murder and could have been imprisoned for life.

Politkovskaya’s investigative reports won her international acclaim. Her shooting shocked the world and widened the rift between Moscow and the West, underscoring the risks run by independent journalists and government critics, while hardening the Kremlin’s depiction of Russia as a nation beset by foes.

The forewoman of the 12-member jury read out the verdicts after about two hours of deliberations at a military courthouse.

When the judge repeated that the defendants were acquitted, relatives of the Makhmudov brothers broke out into clapping and cries of “Bravo!”

“Thank God, thank the jury,” said Dzhabrail Makhmudov, still in the courtroom cage shortly after the verdict. “There was no other possible outcome.”

“We’re glad,” said defence lawyer Murad Musayev. “This is something that happens rarely in Russia. This is what I call justice.”

But relatives and former colleagues of Politkovskaya have said that regardless of the verdict, justice will not be served until the triggerman and the mastermind who had her killed are prosecuted.

The defendants were accused of helping organise and arrange the attack, but the suspected gunman — a third Makhmudov brother, Rustam — is said to be hiding abroad, and prosecutors have not named anyone believed to have ordered the killing.

Politkovskaya was shot in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, as she returned from a supermarket with groceries.