Politkovskaya: FSB agent charged
Anna Politkovskaya was killed in her Moscow apartment last October. Image courtesy of Novaya Gazeta and Human Rights in Russia (www.hro.org)
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Thursday, 18, Oct 2007 09:41
An officer in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has been charged in connection with the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, it has been reported.
News agency Itar-Tass said that FSB Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Ryaguzov has been accused of supplying the 48-year-old's address to a man in contact with her killers.
And according to the Interfax news agency, Vyacheslav Smirnov, an official at the prosecutor general's office, told Moscow city court that eight others had been charged over Ms Politkovskaya's murder.
Officially, the only person charged in connection with her killing is former Chechen governor Shamil Burayev.
He is accused of being complicit in the suspected contract killing of Ms Politkovskaya, a prominent critic of president Vladimir Putin.
Mr Burayev, who unsuccessfully ran for the Moscow-backed Chechen presidency four years ago, was among ten people arrested in connection with the journalist's murder in August, although most have since been released.
Russian prosecutors have charged the former governor of Achkhoi-Martan with supplying contract killers with Ms Politkovskaya's Moscow address.
She was killed on October 7th last year in her apartment building in the Russian capital in a suspected contract killing.
Ms Politkovskaya's death prompted an outpouring of grief and widespread condemnation among the international community.
Despite being a fierce critic of Mr Putin's regime through her frontline investigative reporting from Chechnya, upon her death the president vowed that the "horribly cruel crime" would not go unpunished.
But he added that her influence on Russian politics had been "minimal… very minor".
More than 1,000 people attended the Novaya Gazeta correspondent's funeral in Moscow last year.