Europe - Saturday, October 25, 2008 7:08 - 0 Comments

A Trial of Three And a Half Men…killers of Anna Politkovskaya

The Trial of Suspects Believed to Have Partaken in Politkovskaya’s Murder Attests to the Prosecutors’ Inability to Get to the Bottom of the Case

The trial for the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, which took place in October 2006, has opened with the suspected killer still at large, the press excluded from the proceedings, and an apparent attempted poisoning of the prosecution’s lawyer. But even if the three existing defendants are found guilty, the actual masterminds of the murder have little to worry about.

We will probably never know who killed Anna Politkovskaya. The opening of pretrial proceedings at the Moscow District Military Court on Wednesday confirms, rather than confounds that statement. The three men who are facing prosecution, Sergei Khadjikurbanov and Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, ethnic Chechens and brothers, are accused of shadowing Politkovskaya prior to the killing. But the man believed to have actually pulled the trigger (Rustam Makhmudov, Dzhabrail and Ibraghim’s older brother) is yet to have been detained; the identity of who actually ordered the killing is still unknown; the money supposed to have changed hands in payment for the killing has apparently not been traced; and none of the accused has confessed or agreed to assist the investigation.

If the prosecution has a weak case (and with no murderer in the dock or blood money in the evidence room it is not looking strong), Continue…