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  • Politkovskaya Trial

    A Moscow court on Monday sentenced five men to prison for the 2006 killing of Russian journalist and fierce Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, including two to a life term. A jury found that Rustam Makhmudov shot Politkovskaya at her Moscow apartment building in October 2006, the state-owned legal news agency RAPSI said. He and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, whom the jury found was a mastermind of the killing, were sentenced to life in prison, according to the court. Authorities alleged that an unidentified man asked Gaitukayev to kill Politkovskaya in exchange for $150,000 because of her reports of human rights violations and other issues, the Moscow city court said. A second convicted plotter, former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

    Two of the gunman's brothers, Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Ibragim Makhmudov, were convicted as accomplices. Dzhabrail drove Rustam to the apartment building, and Ibragim was a lookout, telling Rustam that the journalist was approaching her home, RAPSI reported. Dzhabrail Makhmudov received a 14-year sentence, and Ibragim Makhmudov was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the court said. The court also ruled in favor of Politkovskaya's children in a lawsuit against the defendants. The court ruled that each defendant must pay the children 1 million rubles (about $28,800). A sixth defendant, retired police Lt. Col. Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, pleaded guilty in a separate trial in December 2012, accused of being one of the plotters. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and testified against the other defendants.

    A staunch critic of the Kremlin, Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her apartment building while she was working on a series of reports about the restive Russian republic of Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, an independent Moscow-based newspaper. A man in a baseball cap shot Politkovskaya in an elevator of her apartment block as she was returning home. Politkovskaya chronicled human rights abuses in Chechnya, and those stories led to threats against her, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said. Politkovskaya covered the second Chechen war for seven years, and her work angered Russian authorities, the journalists committee said.
    Source: CNN

    We'll never know the entire story.

    I encourage everyone to read the books of Anna Politkovskaya exposing Putin's Russia and the war atrocities in Chechnya
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  • #2

    Spontaneous citizens' memorial at entrance to Anna Politkovskaya's Moscow apartment 10 October 2006


    The convicted laughing during sentencing. From left to right - Ibragim Makhmudov, Lom-Ali Gaytukayev, Jebrail Makhmudov, Rustam Makhmudov and Sergei Khadzhikurbano

    Reportedly, the convicted received $150,000 to assassinate Anna Politkovskaya. They were contract killers. What has never been established (or revealed) is who paid them.

    Politkovskaya (48) who earned fame and the government's enmity for her reporting on President Vladimir Putin and the Russian war in Chechnya, was shot twice in the body and once in the head as she entered the elevator of her building with her hands full of shopping bags. Politkovskaya (the daughter of a Soviet diplomat) was born in New York and held joint U.S. and Russian citizenship. She had been among the most vocal critics of Putin and his policies in restive Chechnya, where she had frequently traveled to report on the horrors of the war, including atrocities, torture and the killings and kidnappings of civilians. Her exposé's on what was really happening in Chechnya contributed greatly to turning Russian public opinion against the war.
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