RUSSIA - PRESS
Politkovskaya murder anniversary
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Campaigners plan a series of events in Moscow and around the world on Sunday to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to catch the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, murdered a year ago.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
TENSIONS MOUNT OVER ANNIVERSARY OF RUSSIAN JOURNALIST'S MURDER
By AFP
Russian officials briefly detained five foreign activists Saturday, as international pressure mounted on Moscow to find the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya almost a year on from her murder.
The activists -- a Briton, three Spaniards and a German-- were arrested along with a Russian colleague in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, in the western Volga region.
They were in Russia to join events on Sunday marking the anniversary of the murder of Politkovskaya, who was one of few Russian journalists to investigate war crimes in Chechnya and openly criticise President Vladimir Putin.
She was gunned down outside her home in central Moscow on October 7 last year.
"They released us after four and a half hours, the five foreigners," Neil Hicks, of the New York-based group Human Rights First told AFP by telephone.
"We were all given fines for alleged violations of the immigration status. We are going to appeal. We have the right to appeal, using our embassies," Hicks added.
"We are heading to Moscow to attend the memorial event tomorrow in Moscow."
Human rights campaigners and opposition groups are planning demonstrations in Moscow on Sunday to mark the anniversary of Politkovskaya's killing.
"This was another way to interfere with the event we were trying to hold. There is a long series of interferences in this event," said Hicks.
The five were picked up at the offices of Russian rights group, the Society for the Promotion of Tolerance, said Hicks.
The others detained were three human rights campaigners from Spain, a German national working for Amnesty International in Moscow, and one of the Russian directors of the Society for the Promotion of Tolerance, he added.
Earlier Saturday, the Council of Europe repeated its call to Moscow to reveal the truth about Politkovskaya's murder.
"The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's most courageous journalists, was a direct attack on democracy, and it must not go unpunished," said Rene van der Linden, who heads the pan-European rights body's parliament.
"I renew my appeal to the Russian authorities to do everything in their power to bring the truth to light, and to the Russian Parliament to follow the investigations closely."
Politikovskaya's murder remains unsolved although Russian investigators have in recent weeks announced the arrest of a series of suspects, including an officer from the FSB security service and a former Chechen politician.
Despite this, Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based press freedom watchdog, last week criticised the inquiry into her murder and expressed doubts "about the will of the authorities to really solve this murder."
In the latest development in the case the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported Saturday that a Ukrainian mafia boss had been detained in connection with the Politkovskaya murder inquiry.
But Roman Shleinov, investigative editor at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, dismissed the report as "complete nonsense".
"We don't think it's serious," he added.
The report in the government-owned daily cited law enforcement sources but did not give the 49-year-old man's name, saying only that he was detained in Moscow and that he was a "criminal authority."
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