Jury acquits suspects in Politkovskaya murder trial

MOSCOW. February 19. KAZINFORM The jury has acquitted all defendants suspected of involvement in the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the courtroom on Thursday.

The jury unanimously concluded that prosecutors had failed to prove the defendants' guilt. The three of them were released in the courtroom. Public prosecutor Yulia Safina said the prosecution would appeal the jury's decision. Novaya Gazeta reporter Politkovskaya, who gained international recognition for her reports of military atrocities against civilians in the troubled Caucasus republic of Chechnya, was gunned down in an elevator in her Moscow apartment building in October 2006, in what police described as a contract killing, Kazinform cites RIA Novosti. Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, brothers from Chechnya, and former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov were charged with involvement in the murder, but the man suspected of pulling the trigger, Rustam Makhmudov - the eldest of the three Makhmudov brothers - remains at large. A separate case has been opened against him.