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Will writer's death get serious inquiry?

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 9, 2006

MOSCOW - Russia has become a deadly place for journalists who run afoul of government officials or their business and political partners.

Those behind the killings are rarely brought to justice, reinforcing a sense of impunity that may have encouraged the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya.

As the European Union and the United States demanded a thorough investigation into Saturday's contract-style killing, there was skepticism that the authorities would ever uncover the culprits of the latest in a series of killings of journalists in Russia under President Vladimir Putin, who has been increasingly accused of rolling back post-Soviet freedoms since coming to power in 2000.

The skepticism was underlined by a $929,700 reward for information that her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, has offered, signaling stronger faith in their own investigative efforts than those promised by the government, which has produced few prosecutions before.

Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said: "Russia is a uniquely hostile place for the execution of independent journalism. It is both violent and repressive."

Politkovskaya's editors said she had been due to publish an investigative article today about torture and kidnappings in Chechnya based on witness accounts and photos of tortured bodies.

She was at least the 43rd journalist killed for her work in Russia since 1993, according to the journalists committee, which has ranked Russia the third most deadly country for journalists, after Iraq and Algeria. Many were killed while reporting on the two wars in Chechnya, and six were caught up in fighting between government and opposition forces in Moscow in 1993.

Many more appear to have been targeted because of their attempts to dig into allegations of corruption. The killers have rarely been found.

SLAIN JOURNALISTS

Some of the killings of reporters in Russia in recent years:

- Oct. 7, 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of the war in Chechnya.

- July 9, 2004: Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, who had been investigating the murky business world in Russia.

- April 29, 2002: Valery Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Tolyatinskoye Oborzreniye, well-known for its reports on local organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption in the southern Russian city of Togliatti.

- June 7, 1998: Larisa Yudina, editor of the opposition newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykia in the southern Russian region of Kalmykia.

- March 1, 1995: Vladislav Listyev, executive director of the newly formed public television station ORT.

- Oct. 17, 1994: Dmitry Kholodov, a reporter for the Moscow newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, who had been investigating mafia connections with the military.

[Last modified October 9, 2006, 02:06:07]