Court Acquits 3 Of Aiding Murder Of Politkovskaya

The Kremlin denied any involvement in her murder, saying it was an attempt to discredit Russia.

A Moscow court acquitted three men accused of helping murder Kremlin critic and journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Thursday, leaving Russia's most politically charged killing in years still unsolved.

The prosecution said it would appeal but the failure to secure a single conviction for the crime -- the most high-profile in a spate of reporters' killings -- raised questions about Russia's resolve to protect freedom of speech.

"This failure amounts to a human rights crisis," Miklos Haraszti," media freedom representative for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a rights and security watchdog, told Reuters.

After a four-month trial, the jury forewoman said brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov were not guilty of acting as accomplices in the murder and cleared former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov of organising the crime.

The three defendants hugged their relatives after the judge ordered them released from the cage in the courtroom where they had been held. Ibragim Makhmudov, from Russia's Muslim Chechnya region, shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."

Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two who published scathing exposes of official corruption and rights abuses, was shot dead outside her apartment on Oct. 7, 2006 after returning home from the supermarket.

The verdict was the culmination of a two-year search for the killers during which Politkovskaya's family and former colleagues had accused prosecutors of bungling their investigation and failing to track down the true culprits.

The man prosecutors suspect of pulling the trigger is on the run and they have never identified the person who they believe ordered Politkovskaya's murder.

"We demand, we need the real murderer, and we will achieve this," Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer for Politkovskaya's family, told reporters outside the courtroom.

KREMLIN UNDER PRESSURE

The Kremlin denied any involvement in Politkovskaya's murder, saying it was an attempt to discredit Russia. Vladimir Putin, Russian president at the time of the murder and now prime minister, said Russia was committed to solving the crime.

But Western governments and rights groups voiced their anger and demanded her killers be jailed. The crime fuelled accusations -- denied by the Kremlin -- that under Putin democratic freedoms were eroded and opposition journalists had to fear for their lives.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia as the world's third most dangerous place for reporters, after Iraq and Algeria.

The Politkovskaya trial echoed the case of Paul Klebnikov, a U.S. journalist shot dead in Moscow in 2004. His suspected killers were acquitted and attempted retrials have been delayed because some of the defendants cannot be tracked down.

Former colleagues of Politkovskaya said before Thursday's verdict they planned to pursue their own investigation into who was behind her killing.

Lawyers for Politkovskaya's family complained during the trial that detectives had not questioned Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Chechyna.

Politkovskaya had accused Moscow's forces and their local allies of committing human rights abuses during a campaign to stamp out an insurgency. Kadyrov has repeatedly denied any involvement in Politkovskaya's murder.