Anna Politkovskaya

There is also a "Journalism prize Anna Politkovskaja" (“il premio giornalistico Anna Politkovskaja”), which is annually awarded in Ferrara, Italy, by the magazine L’internationale and the comune of Ferrara.

In September 2016 Vladimir Markin, official spokesman for the Investigative Committee, included the killing of Anna Politkovskaya among the Most Dramatic Crimes in 21st century Russia and claimed that it had been solved. Her colleagues at Novaya gazeta protested that until the instigator or sponsor of the crime was identified, arrested and prosecuted the case was not closed.

On 7 October 2016 Novaya gazeta released a video clip of its editors, correspondents, photographers and technical and administrative staff holding text-boards giving details of the case and stating, repeatedly, "The sponsor of Anna's murder has not been found". On the same day deputy chief editor Sergei Sokolov published a damning summary of the official investigation, describing its false turns and shortcomings, and emphasised that it had now effectively been wound up. After the three Makhmudov brothers, Khadjikurbanov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev were convicted in 2014, wrote Sokolov, the once large team of investigators was reduced to one person and within a year he retired, to be replaced by a lower-ranking investigator. The 2000 killing of Igor Domnikov, another Novaya gazeta journalist, showed that the perpetrators might be identified (they were convicted in 2008)

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

"People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that", she opens an essay titled "Am I Afraid?", finishing it—and the book—with the words "If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the 'optimistic' forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren."

After Politkovskaya's murder, Vyacheslav Izmailov, her colleague at Novaya Gazeta—a military man who had helped negotiate the release of dozens of hostages in Chechnya before 1999—said that he knew of at least nine previous occasions when Politkovskaya had faced death, commenting "Frontline soldiers do not usually go into battle so often and survive".

Three men were charged with directly aiding Politkovskaya's killer, who was allegedly the brother of two of the suspects. There was insufficient evidence to charge the fourth man—an FSB colonel—with the murder, though he was suspected of a leading role in its organisation; he stood trial at the same time for another offence. The case was held before a jury (a rare occurrence in Russia) and, after the jurors insisted, was open to the press and public.

Russia's Investigative Committee—with help from the Belgian police—arrested Rustam Makhmudov, the man suspected of killing Anna Politkovskaya, after he was detained in the Chechen Republic and transported to Moscow for questioning.

In May 2014 five men were convicted of murdering Politkovskaya, including three defendants who had been acquitted in a previous trial. The defendants were three Chechen brothers, one of whom was accused of shooting Politkovskaya in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building. In June 2014 the men were sentenced to prison, two of them, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev and his nephew Rustam Makhmudov, receiving life sentences. It is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

In December 2012 Dmitry Pavliutchenkov was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in a high security penal colony.

In August 2011, Russian prosecutors claimed they were close to solving the murder after detaining Dmitry Pavliuchenkov, a former policeman, who they alleged was the principal organiser. The following month Kommersant Daily reported that, according to Pavlyuchenkov, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev was the one negotiating with the person who ordered the killing, and although Pavlyuchenkov did not know the name, he suspected he could be the fugitive businessman and Putin critic Boris Berezovsky.

After all three men were acquitted of Politkovskaya's murder in February 2009, her children Vera and Ilya, their lawyers Karinna Moskalenko and Anna Stavitskaya, and senior Novaya Gazeta editor Sergei Sokolov gave their reaction to the trial at a press conference in Moscow. In his comments on the end of the trial, Andrew McIntosh, Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Sub-Committee on the Media and Rapporteur on media freedom, expressed frustration at what he perceived to be a lack of progress in investigating the murder, or the inability of the Russian authorities to find her killers:

Before the trial ended, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had investigated many of the abuses documented by Politkovskaya, was assassinated in Moscow on 19 January 2009. Journalist Anastasia Baburova, who was with Markelov at the time, died later of injuries sustained while trying to intervene.

More closely related to Politkovskaya's work as a journalist was 15 July 2009 murder of Natalia Estemirova. A board member of the Memorial human rights society and one of Politkovskaya's key informants, guides, and colleagues in Chechnya, Estemirova was abducted in Grozny and found dead, several hours later, in the neighbouring Republic of Ingushetia.

On 5 August 2009, the prosecution service's objection to the acquittals in the Politkovskaya trial was upheld by the Supreme Court, and a new trial was ordered.

On 25 November 2008, it was reported that Politkovskaya's murder might have been ordered by a politician inside Russia. Murad Musayev, a lawyer for the men on trial, told journalists that the case notes—as one of the interpretations of the crime—mentioned that a politician, based in Russia (but not named in those notes), was behind her death.

On 5 December 2008, Sergei Sokolov, a senior editor of Novaya Gazeta, testified in court that he had received information (from sources he would not name) that defendant Dzhabrail Makhmudov was an agent of the FSB. He said Makhmudov's uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who was serving a 12-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a Ukrainian businessman, also worked for the FSB.

In May 2007, Random House posthumously published Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary, containing extracts from her notebook and other writings. Subtitled A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, the book gives her account of the period from December 2003 to August 2005, including what she described as "the death of Russian parliamentary democracy", the Beslan school hostage crisis, and the "winter and summer of discontent" from January to August 2005. Because she was murdered "while translation was being completed, final editing had to go ahead without her help", wrote translator Arch Tait in a note to the book.

In May 2007, a large posthumous collection of Anna's articles, entitled With Good Reason, was published by Novaya Gazeta and launched at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. The event came soon after the birth of Anna's namesake grandchild: Vera's daughter was named Anna in honour of her grandmother. A few months later, 10 men were detained on suspicion of various degrees of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder. Four of them were brought before the Moscow District Military Court in October 2008.

The 2007–2008 academic year at the College of Europe was named in her honour.

The award was first given on the one-year anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya's murder on 7 October 2007 to Politkovskaya's friend and colleague, Chechen activist, Natalia Estemirova, who was herself abducted and killed in 2009 in Chechnya to silence her human rights work.

On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of flats, an assassination that attracted international attention. In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

In 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found the Russian Federation responsible for the forced disappearance of a suspected Ingush militant, Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev. Colonel-General Alexander Baranov, the commander of the Russian Caucasus deployment mentioned by Politkovskaya's camp guide as the one who ordered captured militants to be kept in the pits, was filmed as he ordered Yandiyev to be executed.

Politkovskaya was found dead in the lift, in her block of flats in central Moscow on 7 October 2006. She had been shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head at point-blank range. The assassination had happened on Vladimir Putin's birthday, and two days after Ramzan Kadyrov's 30th birthday celebrations, raising suspicions that one or both were served up by the contract hit. There was widespread international reaction to the assassination.

The funeral was held on 10 October 2006 at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in the outskirts of Moscow. Before Politkovskaya was buried, more than one thousand mourners filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. Dozens of Politkovskaya's colleagues, public figures, and admirers of her work gathered at the cemetery. No high-ranking Russian officials could be seen at the ceremony. Politkovskaya was buried near her father, who had died shortly before her.

The international human rights organisation RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War), which focuses on supporting and protecting women human rights defenders working in war and conflict zones, established in 2006 the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award in Politkovskaya's honor. The award recognizes "a woman human rights defender from a conflict zone in the world who, like Anna, stands up for the victims of this conflict, often at great personal risk". Mariana Katzarova, a close friend and a human rights colleague of Politkovskaya, founded RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) and the Anna Politkovskaya Award in 2006 in London, after working as a journalist and human rights advocate in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and the North Caucasus, including 10 years as the Russia Researcher for Amnesty International.

Politkovskaya herself did not deny being afraid, but felt responsible and concerned for her informants. While attending a December 2005 conference on the freedom of the press in Vienna organised by Reporters Without Borders, she said "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it." She often received death threats as a result of her work, including being threatened with rape and experiencing a mock execution after being arrested by the military in Chechnya.

(TS//SI/REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL) Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probably FSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitovskaya@US Provider1, by deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether the attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist.

It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.

While flying south in September 2004 to help negotiate with those who had taken over a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan (North Ossetia), Politkovskaya fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by an Aeroflot flight attendant. She had reportedly been poisoned, with some accusing the former Soviet secret police poison facility.

In 2004, Politkovskaya had a conversation with Ramzan Kadyrov, then Prime Minister of Chechnya. One of his assistants said to her, "Someone ought to have shot you back in Moscow, right on the street, like they do in your Moscow". Ramzan repeated after him: "You're an enemy. To be shot...." On the day of her murder, said Novaya Gazeta' s chief editor Dmitry Muratov, Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on the torture practices believed to be used by the Chechen security detachments known as Kadyrovites. In her final interview, she described Kadyrov—now president of Chechnya—as the "Chechen Stalin of our days".

Politkovskaya was closely involved in attempts to negotiate the release of hostages in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002. When the Beslan school hostage crisis erupted in the North Caucasus in early September 2004, Politkovskaya attempted to fly there to act as a mediator, but was taken off the plane, acutely ill due to an attempted poisoning, in Rostov-on-Don (see Poisoning).

Early in 2001, Politkovskaya was detained by military officials in the southern mountain village of Khattuni. She was investigating complaints from 90 Chechen families about "punitive raids" by federal forces. She interviewed a Chechen grandmother from the village of Tovzeni, Rosita, who endured 12 days of beatings, electric shocks, and confinement in a pit. The men who arrested Rosita presented themselves as FSB employees. The torturers requested a ransom from Rosita's relatives, who negotiated a smaller amount that they were able to pay. Another interviewee described killings and rapes of Chechen men in a "concentration camp with a commercial streak" near the village of Khattuni.

In 2001, Politkovskaya fled to Vienna, following e-mail threats that a police officer whom she had accused of atrocities against civilians in Chechnya was looking to take revenge. Corporal Sergei Lapin was arrested and charged in 2002, but the case against him was closed the following year. In 2005, Lapin was convicted and jailed for the torture and subsequent disappearance of a Chechen civilian detainee, the case exposed by Politkovskaya in her article "Disappearing People". A former fellow officer of Lapin's was among the suspects in Politkovskaya's murder, on the theory that the motive might have been revenge for her part in Lapin's conviction.

Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper known for its often-critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Putin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.

In numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya and the pro-Russian regime there, Politkovskaya described alleged abuses committed by Russian military forces, Chechen rebels, and the Russian-backed administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. She also chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures elsewhere in the North Caucasus. In one characteristic instance in 1999, she not only wrote about the plight of an ethnically-mixed old peoples' home under bombardment in Grozny, but helped to secure the safe evacuation of its elderly inhabitants with the aid of her newspaper and public support. Her articles, many of which form the basis of A Dirty War (2001) and A Small Corner of Hell (2003), depict a conflict that brutalised both Chechen fighters and conscript soldiers in the federal army, and created hell for the civilians caught between them.

Politkovskaya worked for Izvestia from 1982 to 1993 as a reporter and editor of the emergencies and accidents section. From 1994 to 1999, she worked as the assistant chief editor of Obshchaya Gazeta, headed by Yegor Yakovlev, where she wrote frequently about social problems, particularly the plight of refugees. From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for the biweekly Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper with strong investigative reporting that was critical of the new post-Soviet regime from the outset. She published several award-winning books about Chechnya, life in Russia, and Russia under Vladimir Putin, including Putin's Russia.

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (Russian: А́нна Степа́новна Политко́вская , IPA: [ˈanːə sʲtʲɪˈpanəvnə pəlʲɪtˈkofskəjə] ; Ukrainian: Га́нна Степа́нівна Політко́вська , IPA: [ˈɦɑnːɐ steˈpɑn⁽ʲ⁾iu̯nɐ pol⁽ʲ⁾itˈkɔu̯sʲkɐ] ; born Mazepa [mɐˈzɛpɐ] ; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan F. Mazepa from Kostobobriv, Ukraine. Some sources say that her birth name was actually Hanna Mazeppa. Other sources state that she was born in Chernihiv region of Ukraine. Her parents, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, were Ukrainian. Politkovskaya spent most of her childhood in Moscow; she graduated from Moscow State University's school of journalism in 1980. While there, she defended a thesis about the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and married fellow student Alexander Politkovsky. They had two children, Vera and Ilya. At first Alexander was better known, joining TV journalist Vladislav Listyev as one of the hosts on the late-night TV programme Vzglyad. Apart from her childhood years, Politkovskaya spent no more than a few weeks outside Russia at any one time, even when her life came under threat. She was a U.S. citizen and had a U.S. passport, although she never relinquished her Russian citizenship.

A Bitter Taste of Freedom was shown at the 27th Warsaw International Film Festival where it won the Best Documentary Feature Award. From the festival's programme:

Two years ago, in its Resolution 1535 (2007), the Assembly called on the Russian Parliament closely to monitor the progress in the criminal investigations regarding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and hold the authorities accountable for any failures to investigate or prosecute. The closure of the trial yesterday can only be regarded as a blatant failure. I call on the Russian authorities and Parliament to relaunch a proper investigation and shed light on this murder, which undermines not only freedom of expression in Russia, but also its democratic foundation based on the rule of law. There are no excuses for these flawed investigations into murders of politically critical journalists writing against corruption and crime within government, such as the murders of Georgy Gongadze in Ukraine in 2000 and Paul Klebnikov in Moscow in 2004.