RUSSIA: Russia's chief prosecutor yesterday took personal charge of the investigation into the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as international pressure mounted on the Kremlin to find the killer, writes Chris Stephen in Moscow
Ms Politkovskaya (48) was gunned down in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment on Saturday night.
She was a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin and won a slew of prizes with exposés of systematic human rights violations by Russian security forces in Chechnya.
Her murder, on Mr Putin's birthday, has sent shock waves around the world and tributes poured in throughout the day.
The US state department said it was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by her death, and urged Russia to hold a full investigation.
Her editor, Dmitry Murtov of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said: "She defended the poor and miserable." And the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the killing was a "devastating development for journalism in Russia".
Supporters gathered outside her apartment in Moscow, leaving flowers and a few burning candles. A vigil formed at Pushkin Square in the centre of the city, the traditional place for protest rallies.
"She attacked Russian officials for being brutal and unfair to Chechens, especially women and children," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of the World Security Institute.
Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov was "deeply outraged and shocked" by the killing of "an honest journalist and also a woman and a mother".
But there was no word from Mr Putin. The Kremlin website said only that the Russian president held a security council meeting yesterday in the Kremlin but made no mention of her death.
In her book, Putin's Russia, Ms Politkovskaya accused the former KGB man of turning Russia into a dictatorship, with corruption and human rights violations unchecked and democracy subverted.
The task of prosecutor general Yuri Chaika will not be easy. One suspect, at least in the writings of Ms Politkovskaya, is Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Russian prime minister of Chechnya.
In recent years she has written a series of stories alleging that he runs the province like a gangster fiefdom with systematic abuses that are ignored by Moscow.
She was about to publish a new exposé, timed just as Mr Kadyrov positions himself to be appointed president of the war-torn republic.
Ms Politkovskaya wrote that Mr Kadyrov had told a meeting of subordinates that he wanted her dead, though he has denied the charge.
The only clue publicly released is grainy CCTV footage apparently showing her killer, wearing a baseball cap, entering her apartment building shortly before she was shot dead with four bullets.
Mr Kadyrov is not the only person with a grudge. Ms Politkovskaya has made powerful enemies throughout the Russian security apparatus.
In 2001 she fled to Austria after being tipped off that a police commander she had written about was planning to assassinate her.
And in 2004, flying to cover the Beslan massacre, she sipped drugged tea on a plane, went into a coma and woke up in hospital.
In 2000 she was kidnapped in Chechnya by pro-Russian forces and subjected to a mock execution. She also criticised Chechen forces for their abuse of human rights, but she enjoyed widespread support among many ordinary Chechens.
Friends and supporters had long warned her to be careful or even flee the country, but she had insisted she needed to stay to record abuses taking place.
Her killing piles pressure on a government already struggling with the unsolved assassination last month of the deputy governor of the central bank, Andrei Kozlov.
Like Ms Politkovskaya, he had established a reputation for rooting around for the truth,