US group: Russia investigating officials in Politkovskaya killing

Jan 23, 2007, 11:40 GMT

Moscow - The head of a US-based journalists' lobbying group said Tuesday that Russia had opened a criminal investigation into police officials in the October killing of Moscow journalist Anna Politkovskaya - leading to a wave of denials from Russian officials.

Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the Russian Prosecutor General's Office is investigating 'several' officials in the wartorn republic of Chechnya.

Politkovskaya, he said, was due to publish an article revealing the officials' alleged connections to torture in the republic, scene of two wars in the last 10 years, when she was murdered.

'We are heartened to hear of any information that could lead to justice in this crime,' Simon said at a press conference called to release the results of the committee's delegation in Russia. He added the case was one of several versions prosecutors were looking into.

Simon said the CPJ's four-person delegation had received its information during a meeting with Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov on Monday.

The ministry, however, shot down Simon's announcement.

'The CPJ's assertion absolutely does not correspond to reality,' a ministry statement said. It added prosecutors were looking at 'a few' versions of the murder and that Chechen investigators were examining leads from Politkovskaya's final article, which was printed posthumously.

Malakhov could not be reached.

Little official information about the investigation has been released. Media reports in late October that policemen from central Russia were suspected in the killing have since faded into obscurity.

Politkovskaya - who wrote critical, investigative pieces about Chechnya and the Kremlin for Novaya Gazeta - was gunned down October 7 in the elavator of her central Moscow apartment building. The slaying bore all the hallmarks of a contract killing.

According to the CPJ, Russia is the world's third-most dangerous country for journalists, trailing only Iraq and Algeria. Thirteen journalists have been killed in contract-style hits in the last six years, with not a single case solved.

The CPJ's trip itself came as a television anchor was killed in the Pacific city of Vladivostok over the weekend, and as a female newspaper reporter was badly beaten Monday, also in the eastern Russian city.

The delegation, according to CPJ board chairman and Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, had made 'a step forward' in speaking for the first time with authorities.

A meeting planned with Kremlin deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cancelled at the last minute, however. Peskov, the group said, left open the possibility of meeting in the near future in Washington.

Some Russian activists, however, more directly impugned the Kremlin for the predominance of violence against journalists in Russia.

'The death of journalists is always a tragedy,' Oleg Panfilov, director of Moscow's Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said. 'But what also bothers us is the atmosphere of fear authorities here have created.'

Panfilov added that over 50 criminal cases were opened against journalists every year in Russia, with reporters landing in court for parodies and jokes about officials as well as for material they never published. Consequently, reporters are less willing to write about many subjects.

President Vladimir Putin, he noted, first acknowledged Politkovskaya's murder only three days after it had happened. In contrast, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately addressed his nation Saturday after the killing of a prominent ethnically Armenian journalist.

Regarding Politkovskaya and the possibility authorities do not want to find her killers, Steiger, of the Wall Street Journal, added that 'many sources' had told him the investigation was continuing apace.

But, he added, journalists themselves must demand justice and their own safety. 'That's the only way to get government protection,' he added. 'To say all benefit from a free press.'