Politkovskaya accused face retrial

The family of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist shot dead outside her Moscow flat in October 2006, have criticised the decision of Russia's supreme court to overturn the acquittals of three men accused of playing a part in her death.

Ever since her death, there has been continued speculation that the Kremlin had a role in killing Politkovskaya (above), a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin's record in Chechnya. Neither the mastermind nor the assassin of the contract killing - one of the 16 unresolved cases involving journalists since Putin came to power in 2000 - have been found.

And Politkovskaya's family, and many others, believe that the pursuit of Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former policeman, and Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, two brothers from Chechnya, who are accused of casing out the journalist's flat, finding the gun used in the killing and driving the getaway vehicle, is nothing more than a diversion.

"We did not challenge the acquittals," said Anna Stavitskaya, the family's lawyer. "We did not think it needed to be overturned. We do not want to see the case brought to a standstill."

The court was only able to overturn the decision to retry the three men on a technicality - by claiming that the judge at the initial trial had allowed the defence team to exert pressure on the jury.

It is now likely that the trial will be held behind closed doors without a jury, and that the Kremlin will be able to secure a symbolic conviction, in order to maintain an illusion of justice in this high-profile case. At these trials, where the result is determined solely by a judge, 95 per cent of defendants are convicted, as opposed to 50 per cent when there is a jury.

The developments have angered the people who knew Politkovskaya. "It's completely obvious that today's ruling was based on a political decision, not a procedural one," Sergei Sokolov, the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where she worked, told a Moscow radio station. "For the authorities, the most important thing was just to make sure someone went to prison."