Peace and Justice Post

Three men have been accused of helping to organise the 2006 killing of Anna Politkovskaya [AFP]

Russia’s supreme court has ordered a retrial of three men cleared of being involved in the murder of prominent journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.

Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, two brothers from Chechnya, and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, had been found not guilty in February by a Moscow court, but the supreme court overturned the verdict on Thursday.

“The supreme court has annulled the innocent verdict on the case of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. The case will be examined again with new jurors,” Pavel Odintsov, the supreme court spokesman, said.

The three men had been accused of helping organise and arrange Politkovskaya’s contract-style killing.

Politkovskaya, who wrote books and articles that fiercely criticised Vladimir Putin, the then Russian president, was shot dead in her central Moscow apartment building in October three years ago.

Many of her colleagues have suggested her murder was linked to her investigative reporting of abuses committed by Russian troops as they battled separatists in the republic of Chechnya.

Anna Stavitskaya, a lawyer for the Politkovskaya family, said they did not support the annulment of the verdicts.

“They were completely in agreement with the acquittal verdicts, we did not regret this and we think there is no foundation for their  annulment,” she told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from Moscow, said there have been a number of serious questions raised about how the investigation into the murder has been conducted.

“The case was heavily criticised, not only by friends and colleagues of the murdered journalist, but by political figures as well,” he said.

“They say that the case not only failed to bring the actual killer to justice, the person who pulled the trigger has never been found, nor has the person who ordered the killing been found.

“During the investigation itself, vital evidence reportedly went missing, including mobile and sim card information, computer disks and photographs, and the footage of the assassin actually entering Politkovskaya’s apartment.”