Jury finds all defendants guilty of Politkovskaya murder

A jury in Moscow today found all five defendants guilty of organising and carrying out the 2006 murder of Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.
The jury at Moscow city court found four defendants guilty of organising the shooting of Politkovskaya at the entrance to her apartment block while the fifth, Rustam Makhmudov, was found guilty of carrying out the killing, the Interfax news agency reported.
The shooting of Politkovskaya, a journalist for liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta who strongly criticised the Kremlin's tactics in Chechnya, shocked the world, but this is the first time that those directly involved in the killing have been brought to justice.

However investigators have yet to identify who ordered the killing.
The jury verdict came after an earlier trial in the murder involving several of the same defendants ended in an acquittal in 2009.
A former policeman Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who was accused of tracking Politkovskaya so she could be assassinated and providing the murder weapon, was in 2012 sentenced to 11 years in a prison camp.

Those convicted over the murder include three Chechen brothers: Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov who were found guilty of organising the killing, while a third brother, Rustam, was found guilty of shooting Politkovskaya. He was on the run during the earlier trial.

The men's uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev was also found guilty of organising the crime along with a former Moscow police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov.
Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and Khadzhikurbanov had already been tried and acquitted over the affair. The supreme court then halted a retrial and sent the case back for more investigation, which resulted in the current trial.
Sentencing will begin tomorrow at 0900 GMT, Novaya Gazeta wrote on its website.
Politkovskaya made powerful enemies with her fearless reporting and exposure of atrocities carried out by pro-Kremlin armed groups in Chechnya.