Journalist critical of Putin murdered in Moscow

A crowd of protesters gathered in central Moscow on Oct. 8 to express their anger at the assassination of the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who became the 13th Russian journalist to be killed in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. Politkovskaya had been due to publish an article on torture and kidnappings by pro-Moscow forces in the restless southern republic of Chechnya, her colleagues said. Politkovskaya, who won international acclaim for exposing the brutality of Russian forces in Chechnya, was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow on Oct. 7. Police were hunting for a man in a white baseball cap who was filmed by a CCTV camera entering the building a few moments before she was shot three times in the chest and once in the head. The killing immediately threw suspicion on the security services and the pro-Moscow Chechen forces that control Chechnya. "You just have to look at the subjects of her latest work and there's your list of chief suspects," said Viktor Shenderovich, a well-known radio and television commentator, who joined the protest by several hundred people on Pushkin Square. In a reference to the KGB's successor, the federal security service FSB, Shenderovich said: "The culprits will never be found, because the people who will be investigating this murder walk down the same corridors as those who ordered it." Protesters carried placards reading "The Kremlin killed freedom of speech," and "Anna, great daughter of Russia." Flyura Arslanova, a pensioner clutching a photograph of Politkovskaya and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, said: "It's a tragedy. She was killed for being honest." Eduard Limonov, a radical opposition figure, said: "It is Putin who has created this society of hate where journalists are murdered and other nationalities become the victim of Russian race supremacy." Politkovskaya, a mother of two, had harried security officers, military men, and Chechnya's controversial prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, in numerous articles for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta which condemned the cruelty wrought against civilians in the conflict between pro-Moscow forces and separatist rebels. She was widely admired for her courage and tenacity in uncovering stories that few other reporters dared to touch. Her books–A Dirty War: A Russian reporter in Chechnya and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya–brought her worldwide acclaim. She was once arrested and subjected to a mock execution by security forces in Chechnya, and came close to death on another occasion in an apparent poisoning attempt. Yet she denied being particularly brave, saying in one interview: "The duty of doctors is to give health to their patients, the duty of the singer to sing, and the duty of the journalist is to write what this journalist sees in reality." A spokesperson for Russia's prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, said that all motives for the killing were being examined, but "of course the main one we are looking at is the professional activity of the journalist." In Washington, the State Department said Politkovskaya was "personally courageous and committed to seeking justice even in the face of previous death threats," but the Kremlin was silent. Putin held a routine meeting of his security council, but did not mention the murder. The European Union said Russian authorities should launch "a thorough investigation" into the "heinous crime" of her murder. Novaya Gazeta placed a portrait of Politkovskaya trimmed with black on its website and announced a $934,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the people who ordered her killing. Its deputy editor, Andrei Lipsky, told the Guardian that Politkovskaya had been preparing an article for the Oct. 9 edition exposing torture of opponents by officials of the Chechen prime minister, but she did not manage to complete it before she was shot. "We are trying to piece together the fragments [from her notes]," he said. Kadyrov was asked on Oct. 8 to comment on accusations that his men carried out the killing. He replied: "Making assumptions without any basis or serious evidence means arguing on the level of rumors and gossip, and that flatters neither journalists nor politicians." He told the Itar-Tass news agency: "I want to underline that although Politkovskaya's material about Chechnya was not always objective, as a human being I am sincerely sorry for the journalist." Outside Politkovskaya's apartment block on Lesnaya Street, mourners left carnations and candles close to a portrait of her placed on top of a mail box. Svetlana Khokhlova, who uses a wheelchair, said she had traveled from the outskirts of the city to pay her respects. "She wrote about the forgotten people like me," she said. "She was sharp and intelligent and she wrote the truth. I'm ashamed of my country today." Inside the building, the doors of the elevator where Politskovaya was shot stood open, a single bullet hole just below head-height puncturing the steel back wall. Detectives went from floor to floor questioning the block's residents.