The Mysterious Politkovskaya Verdict
Yezhednevny Zhurnal columnist Zoya Svetova comments that the inability of the prosecution to prove the defendants guilty in the murder trial of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya says more about the process than about the case itself.
The investigation into the Politkovskaya murder lasted nearly two years. All that time, Novaya Gazeta cooperated and steadfastly maintained that the investigators were professionals of the highest caliber. The paper said the investigators were doing everything possible, but that security bodies were obstructing their work.
Whoever was running the trial arranged a not-guilty verdict. Otherwise they would have simply disbanded the jury, as happened three times in the case of the March 2005 attempted assassination of Anatoly Chubais, and in the case of former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin.