Politkovskaya murder case goes to jury

Moscow: They snicker and whisper in the defendants' cage while their lawyers wrangle over evidence - a ragtag pair of Chechen brothers and a crooked former policeman, alleged lookouts and errand runners in a crime that has become an overarching symbol for unsolved violence against some of Russia's most outspoken critics.

A Moscow jury has started deliberations in the trial of three men charged in the killing of investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya. The 12-member military court jury was expected to reach its verdict yesterday.

But there is a pervasive sense that the trial is tangential, that the evidence is patchy and that the Russian government has only skimmed the edges of the crime rather than dug at its roots.

Conspicuously missing from the courtroom is anyone accused of pulling the trigger, ordering or paying for the slaying. Lawyers say evidence has linked the crime to the FSB, modern-day equivalent of the KGB, but has failed to reveal how far up the ranks of intelligence services the plan to kill Politkovskaya reached.

This trial is supposed to be a start; investigators say they are preparing a case against the missing mastermind and killer. But many close to the case worry that, if these defendants are convicted, the search for the killers would fizzle.

"If the verdict is guilty, nobody will be looking for the real murderers," said Mourad Moussaev, lawyer for Dzhabrail Makhmudov, the younger Chechen brother. "They will mark the Anna Politkovskaya case closed."

Politkovskaya was shot dead at close range as she arrived home on an October night. Her columns, criticising then-President Vladimir V. Putin for creating an atmosphere of lawlessness and dredging up the sadistic underbelly of the Chechen wars, had irritated the Kremlin for years. Putin famously complained that her death was even more damaging to Russia's reputation than her investigative reports. Since then, the government has taken to blaming the killing on forces abroad.