Five convicted for role in 2006 murder of Russian journalist News
Five convicted for role in 2006 murder of Russian journalist

[JURIST] Five men were found guilty for their involvement in the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive] in a Russian court on Tuesday. Brothers Rustam, Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov, their uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, and former Moscow police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov were all convicted, but a mastermind behind the murder has yet to be named [Reuters report]. Three of the men were acquitted in February 2009 due to a lack of prosecutorial evidence, but the Russian Supreme Court vacated the acquittal and ordered a reinvestigation of the case [JURIST reports]. The defendants will be sentenced [BBC report] at a later date and plan to appeal the verdict.

A human rights activist and critic of the Kremlin, Politkovskaya was shot dead in an elevator of her apartment building in Moscow as she was returning home. Politkovskaya investigated human rights abuses in Chechnya and high-level corruption across Russia, and her death raised concerns about the safety of journalists and other critics of the government. Because she was a critic of Russian governmental policies, it was widely speculated at the time of her murder that the Russian government was involved [CPJ report]. At the time she was working for the low-circulation independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta [official website, in Russian] where she was writing reports on Chechnya. Her death was widely believed to be a contract killing. Former Russian police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was found guilty [JURIST report] in December 2012 for his role in Politkovskaya’s murder. Russia’s Federal Security Service charged Rustam Makhmudov for the murder [JURIST report] in June 2011.