Word: politkovskaya
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When the trial of four men accused of being involved in the 2006 murder of Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya ended in acquittal in February, many, including Politkovskaya's family, were relieved. It meant the investigation into the crusading journalist's shooting would continue and, they hoped, would finally catch the real culprits: the person who ordered the assassination and the person who pulled the trigger. But on Thursday, Russia's Supreme Court overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial, sparking fears that a guilty verdict the second time around will end the search for Politkovskaya's killers...
...bias against the defendants, which necessitated a retrial on the same charges in the same court. (By citing procedural violations, the Supreme Court renders the first verdict void, and so sidesteps the issue of double jeopardy which states a person can't be tried for the same crime twice.) Politkovskaya's family and lawyers oppose a retrial, saying a guilty verdict for the alleged accomplices could end the investigation and allow those directly responsible for the murder to remain free. Meanwhile, journalists and human rights advocates can't help but note that the announcement comes little more than a week...
...There is no basis for the verdict to be overturned," Anna Stavitskaya, the lawyer for Politkovskaya's son and daughter, told the judges, according to Russian media. "We are more interested in the mastermind and the killer," said Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper for which Politkovskaya worked, speaking to Ekho Moskvy, an independent radio station. "It's obvious that today's ruling was based on a political decision - not on a procedural one. For the authorities, the most important thing was simply to make sure someone goes to prison...
More seriously, the unsolved murders of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, human-rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova as well as the recent shootings of Ruslan and Sulim Yamadayev and Umar Israilov - enemies of Kremlin-supported Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov - and the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 point to a rule of lawlessness rather than the growing influence of a new code of professional behavior...
...would have broadened the terms for a treason conviction. Permission was granted for a protest march by an opposition party last month. And Medvedev visited the headquarters of Novaya Gazeta after the murder of journalist Anastasia Baburova - no such gesture was forthcoming from Putin after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya two years ago, a journalist from the same newspaper known for her exposes of human rights abuses in Chechnya...