Rallies in Moscow on anniversary of Politkovskaya murder epa photos including 00000401141293 available (Roundup)

Oct 7, 2007, 14:57 GMT

Moscow - Opposition activists, journalist and human rights defenders rallied under the rain in central Moscow Sunday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and to appeal for fair elections.

A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, Politkovskaya had won international acclaim for her reporting of human rights abuses against civilians in war-torn Chechnya.

For Russia's beleaguered opposition groups, her death in a contract-style shooting in the front of her Moscow apartment has come to symbolize the lack of civil liberties and safety for government critics under Putin's rule.

About 1,000 people filed through a police checkpoint and stood with carnations for under umbrellas and protest slogans in Pushkinskaya Square on Sunday for a dissenters' march called by former prime minister and opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov.

While authorities said 800 policemen including OMON riot police were deployed, Moscow city hall had granted permission for a maximum 500 to attend the march, Kasyanov's Spokeswoman Tatyana Razbash said.

Early Russian media reports Sunday cited 200 participants.

Speaking in front of images of Politkovskaya, her newspaper's former editor and chief Dimitry Muratov announced Novaya Gazeta was reactivating Politkovskaya's cell phone in hopes of reviving the stream calls about official malfeasance.

'This number stopped answering on October 7 last year,' Muratov said. 'On this number, people called her to set up meetings during which she was given extremely important information on corruption in the Russian Federation.'

Muratov credited Politkovskaya article in 2000 for the European Court of Human Rights Thursday ruling against Russia in three extra- judicial killings of Chechen civilians.

Kasyanov thanked activist worldwide who gathered to Politkovskaya's 'political assassination,' and said her name had joined the ranks of 'our society's highest moral authorities' alongside Soviet rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov and veteran activist Lyudmila Alexeyevna.

Alexeyevna, 79, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, also spoke Sunday. 'Politkovskaya struggled against lawlessness and against violence. Her destruction confirms the truth she wrote,' she said.

Kasyanov also decried 'manipulation' and 'propaganda' by the 'Russian Federations' current totalitarian state' to give a semblance of democracy and called the upcoming December parliamentary elections 'a farce.'

Following his speech the crowd briefly took up a chant of 'Russia without Putin,' and waved party signs reading '336 days without Politkovskaya' and 'No to political censure.'

   Led by Kasyanov demonstrators then marched up Lisnaya Street to place flowers in front of the apartment building where Politkovskaya lived and was murder.

   Earlier in the day former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, the presidential candidate for The Other Russia, an opposition coalition which Kasyanov quit earlier this year, had lit a candle at Politkovskaya's home, saying it was 'not a day for politics,' according to his spokeswoman Lyudmila Mamina.

   Dissenters' marches in her memory were also held in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novogorod and several other Russian cities.

Using what rights groups have described as bullying tactics, authorities have increasingly cracked down on the wave of dissenters' marches held across Russia to call for a fair elections through the March presidential vote.

At Kievskaya train station, where activists often meet before the marches, police were letting in only passengers with tickets in hand, and about 200 from the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi rallied outside in celebration of Putin's 55th birthday.

On Saturday, police detained five Western rights activists and interrogated organizers of a memorial conference for Politkovskaya in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometres east of Moscow. The conference was cancelled after organizers' funds were frozen by authorities.

The five activists - three Spaniards, a Briton and a German employee of Amnesty International - were later released and fined for a routine violation of registration regulations, a regional police spokesman said, Interfax reported.

Conference organizers complained that the detention was part an official intimidation campaign to stop the meeting, where participants planned to discuss the investigation of Politkovskaya's murder and the state of journalism in Russia today.

The state-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta also on Saturday reported that a Ukrainian mafia boss had been detained in connection with Politkovskaya's murder.

Ten alleged members of a Chechen criminal group, including four law-enforcement officers and a member of the state security service, were arrested in connection the case in late August.

Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika hailed the detention last month of the former head of a district in Chechnya as a major breakthroughs in the investigation.

But suspicion that the Kremlin could be linked with her death have only grown deeper as several suspects have had alibis and have now been released.

Politkovskaya was one of 13 journalists slain in contract-style killings in Russia since Putin came to office in 2000, according to the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists.

No suspects have yet been charged in Politkovskaya's murder.