Issue 147

Russian death treated as 'contract killing'

23rd October 2006

A leading Russian journalist was shot dead as she stepped out of the lift of her Moscow apartment block.

s Anna Politkovskaya was killed just two days before she was due to publish a scathing account of Russia's dealings in Chechnya, which included reports of torture carried out by Russian agents.

Politkovskaya, one of Russia's most well-known investigative journalists and public critic of President Vladimir Putin, built up a reputation documenting the killings and torture of Chechnyan civilians. Prosecutors believe that her reporting, which had often brought her under attack from the police and the military, is linked directly with her death.

Vitaly Yaroshevsky, deputy chief editor of Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said Politkovskaya's article lifted the lid on civilian torture carried out by officers loyal to Chechnya's Moscow-backed Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. Politkovskaya was to testify against Mr Kadyrov, a protégé of Mr Putin, in a case over the kidnapping and killing of two civilians.

In an tragic twist, Politkovskaya said at a conference on press freedom last year that "people sometimes pay with their lives for saying out loud what they think." She had repeatedly been the subject of death threats, including an attempt to poison her tea on board an aeroplane in 2004. It is reported that her son regularly checked her car for bombs.

The hopes of those praying for a truly democratic Russia have suffered a serious set back. A giant photograph of Politkovskaya in Pushkin Square, Moscow was captioned "The Kremlin has killed freedom of speech." Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president has described the killing as "a savage crime" and a "blow to the entire democratic, independent press."

The killing is suspected to be at least the thirteenth contract journalist murder since Putin took power in 2000. Stanislav Belkosky, leading Russian political scientist added that "the increase in the frequency of killings reflects the growing criminalisation of the ruling elite's mentality. In the 1990s, the criminal world and the political elite were separate. Now they have merged."

Melissa Cathcart