Politkovskaya Arrests

He was charged with extortion and abuse of office. Ryaguzov was previously named as mastermind of the murder, but that has been dropped. Officials are still investigating the identity of the organizer of the crime as well as conducting a separate probe into the suspected gunman, another Makhmudov brother named Rustam, who is thought to be outside Russia.

Politkovskaya worked for the independent Novaya Gazeta and wrote about the horrors of Russia’s war in Chechnya for seven years. Outside the border war, she also viewed her own country and former Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a highly critical eye. She received death threats and survived an apparent poisoning attempt, then was gunned down at 48 outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006. She was on her way home from shopping when she apparently met the gunman in the elevator of her flat; she was shot in the chest twice and in the head once and left in the elevator. The gun used in her killing was found thrown down beside her, as is the practice of Moscow hit-men.

The arrests have not answered all the questions about Politkovskaya’s death. Her newspaper colleagues dispute the authorities’ claim that suspected gunman Rustam Makhmudov has fled Russia and say that whoever did the shooting is still in the country.

Politkovskaya, one of the most famous Russian journalists to people outside the country, was far from the only journalist killed in recent years in contract-style assassinations. The international Committee to Protect Journalists has named Russia the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists. More than a dozen journalists have been murdered in Russia in recent years, including Paul Klibanov, the editor of the U.S. business magazine Forbes, who was killed in 2004.