Trial unlikely to solve riddle of Russian reporter Politkovskaya's murder

FOUR men have appeared in a Moscow military court over the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Two Chechen brothers and two former state security officials stand accused of being involved in the murder of Politkovskaya in October 2006.

Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov are charged with keeping the journalist under surveillance.

Sergey Khadzhikurbanov, a former city police official, is alleged to have provided them with technical assistance.

A fourth man, Pavel Ryaguzov, a former agent in Russia's secret service, the FSB, faces charges of assisting them.

Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Russian policy in Chechnya, was shot dead in the lift of her block of flats two years ago. The motive for her murder has remained a mystery, although many in Russia and abroad suspect that the state, eager to silence a critical voice, may have had some involvement.

The man who officials claim actually pulled the trigger, 34-year-old Rustam Makhmudov, is brother to two of the accused and is still at large, with rumours circulating that he now lives abroad. Grainy CCTV footage allegedly shows Rustam Makhmudov entering and leaving Politkovskaya's building at about the time of the murder.

The trial began yesterday despite the fact that Karina Moskalenko, the lawyer representing the Politkovskaya family, is in a Strasbourg hospital after a suspected poisoning. A prominent human rights lawyer who has represented some of the Kremlin's leading foes, Ms Moskalenko said her husband found significant amounts of a mercury-like substance in the family's car.

The attempt to murder or intimidate Ms Moskalenko will cast a further shadow over the trial.

"Despite the trial, the case cannot be considered closed, because the defendants include neither the person who fired the shots nor the people who were behind my mother's death," said Politkovskaya's son, Ilya.

Ilya Politkovsky also expressed fears that the military judge might order the trial to be carried out behind closed doors. Authorities moved the proceedings to a military court owing to the secret-service background of one of the accused.

Sergei Sokolov, the editor of Politkovskaya's paper, Novaya Gazeta, said the trial was "just the first part of" the case.

Politkovskaya's friends and family also doubt that the trial will reveal how Rustam Makhmudov managed to leave the country and remain at large.

A 2008 report by the organisation Reporters Without Frontiers accused Russia of Soviet-era practices by detaining journalists who fall foul of the authorities in psychiatric institutions.

The trial is a grim reminder that a number of people critical of the Kremlin have died or been poisoned. Two weeks after Politkovskaya was shot dead, Alexander Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning, while the pro-western president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, nearly died from a dose of dioxin while campaigning in the country's 2004 presidential election.

Journalist knew the dangers of telling the truth

ACCORDING to Russian police, Anna Politkovskaya probably looked her killer in the eye before he fired four shots into her, killing the 48-year-old journalist instantly.

An arch-critic of the Kremlin's Chechen policy and the behaviour of Moscow-backed Chechen militia, she was familiar with death threats and once had to flee Vienna when she was told a Russian officer she had accused of committing atrocities wanted revenge.

She also suffered a serious, and mysterious, bout of poisoning after drinking tea while flying to cover the Beslan hostage crisis in 2004.

Despite the risks, Politkovskaya continued to report for her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

In an interview a year before her death, the mother of two said she understood the dangers, but had to keep on writing because that was her "duty as a journalist".

She was one of at least 13 journalists killed in contract-style slayings during Vladimir Putin's eight-year presidency, and few suspects have ever been prosecuted.