From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 8/31/2007 2:33 AM
 
Rally Marks Slain Russian's Birthday
UPDATED - Thursday August 30, 2007 9:28pm from our sister station WJLA-TV
 
MOSCOW (AP) - Human rights advocates, journalists and politicians marched Thursday to the apartment building where journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down to commemorate her birthday and show their skepticism over government claims about who was behind her killing. Between 200 and 300 people rallied in a central Moscow square before walking to the apartment building where Politkovskaya lived. Her killing last October deepened concerns about the safety of journalists and government critics in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

attending the rally laid roses and carnations at the doorway and taped photographs of Politkovskaya on the wall, along with a sign that read: "The Truth Can't be Killed."

The commemoration on what would have been Politkovskaya's 49th birthday came days after the chief prosecutor announced the arrests of 10 suspects in her killing and said it was ordered by someone outside the country to discredit Putin and destabilize Russia.

That assertion - which echoed statements by Putin in the days following the killing - met with skepticism from Kremlin critics and Politkovskaya's former colleagues. Her critical reporting about the government, and particularly its war in Chechnya, earned her many enemies at home.

Russian media reported Thursday that prosecutors have released two of the people originally named as suspects, and that a court official said a third is no longer linked to the case.

The prosecutor general's office refused to comment on the reports.

"There are serious concerns ... that all these statements are being made to shield the real perpetrators," Garry Kasparov, an opposition leader, said at the rally.

"Any dictatorship's last argument is a bullet and they've used it against Politkovskaya. And it was a shot fired at press freedom," said the former chess champion, a vocal critic of Putin.

Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika has said Politkovskaya's shooting was organized by a Moscow-based crime ring that was led by an ethnic Chechen who specialized in contract killings. Among those arrested, he said, were five current or former law enforcement officers who were accused of tracking Politkovskaya and providing her killers with information.

Their arrests seemed to confirm long-standing allegations of collusion between police officers and members of organized crime groups in Moscow.

But two of the former police officers have since been released, Russian media said Thursday.

A Federal Security Service lieutenant colonel who was named this week as an 11th suspect was still being held, but his arrest was not connected to the killing, military court spokesman Alexander Minchanovsky said.

Politkovskaya was the 13th journalist killed in Russia since Putin took office in 2000, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said. Nobody has been convicted in any of the cases.

http://bob.wjla.com/headlines/0807/451737.html