RUSSIA:RUSSIAN PROSECUTORS have charged three men with having a role in the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was critical of the Kremlin's human rights record in Chechnya.
A gunman shot Ms Politkovskaya in her central Moscow apartment block in October 2006, a murder which shocked the West but barely resonated in Russia outside a small band of intelligentsia who read her reports in the newspaper.
"Three figures are accused in the murder of the journalist," the Russian prosecutor general's office said in a statement. Prosecutors named the men as Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Ibragim Makhmudov.
Last month Russian prosecutors named a different man, Rustam Makhmudov. They said yesterday that their investigation against him was ongoing.
Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper for which Ms Politkovskaya wrote, said it was "absolutely impossible" to assert the investigation into her death was over.
"A crime cannot be solved if the killer himself is at large and, quite probably, beyond the borders of our long-suffering motherland; if the one who ordered the murder has not been identified; if no criminal cases have been launched against those who allowed regular leaks of information," Mr Muratov said.