Russia’s prosecutor general has opened a criminal investigation into several police officials in Chechnya who may have killed reporter Anna Politkovskaya because she was about to publish an article alleging their involvement in torture. The information was disclosed to a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists in a meeting on Monday with Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov.
…
Foreign Ministry officials, while disclosing the lead involving police in Chechnya, noted that it is one of several theories being pursued in the slaying of Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006. Politkovskaya’s article describing state-sponsored torture in Chechnya was published posthumously in her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
…
The CPJ delegation also met on Monday with Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the government human rights council, and delivered more than 400 postcards calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring an end to an alarming string of unsolved journalist slayings…. Among those signing the postcards, which were collected at CPJ’s International Press Freedom Awards ceremony in November, were New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, New Yorker Editor David Remnick, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan, and press freedom activist Myroslava Gongadze, widow of the slain Ukrainian reporter Georgy Gongadze. Pamfilova promised to deliver the postcards directly to Putin.
…
Russia is the third deadliest country for reporters worldwide, according to a recent CPJ study.