Is this the killer of Russian journalist?

[align=left]Is this the killer of Russian journalist?
London Telegraph / Adrian Blomfield | October 9 2006
Russia's best known investigative journalist was murdered two days before she was due to publish a scathing report on torture by Russian agents in Chechnya, it emerged yesterday, as outrage spread around the world.
As messages poured in for Anna Politkovskaya, who became famous for her withering criticism of President Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya, Russian activists struggled to assess the disturbing implications of her killing for the future of their country.[/align]
The US State Department said it was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by what appeared to be at least the 13th contract killing of a journalist since Mr Putin took power in 2000. European governments expressed similar sentiments.
But from the Kremlin there was silence. Not even speculation on websites that Politkovskaya's death was a birthday present for Mr Putin, who was 54 on Saturday, the day she was killed, could provoke a government reaction.
Among the thousand or so protesters at vigils in Moscow and St Petersburg, there was no doubt that someone in the Kremlin knew something about the reporter's death.
The words scrawled across the giant photograph of Politkovskaya in Pushkin Square, Moscow, said it all: "The Kremlin has killed freedom of speech."
A portrait of Mr Putin bore the words: "You are responsible for everything."
Politkovskaya's newspaper, the bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta, which is partly owned by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was due to run her latest Chechnyan expose.
Although she had not filed her article, the deputy chief editor, Vitaly Yaroshevsky, said it lifted the lid on torture and kidnapping of civilians by officers loyal to Chechnya's Moscow-backed prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov.
Mr Kadyrov, 30, a protégé of Mr Putin, was one of Politkovskaya's foremost enemies. She was to testify against him in a case over the kidnapping and killing of two civilians. Politkovskaya, 48, was shot twice at close range as she returned to her flat from shopping. The mother of two was found in the lift, with a 9mm Makarov pistol by her side.
CCTV showed a man, in black and with a baseball cap, hurrying from the building.
Politkovskaya made many powerful enemies in the FSB, the spy agency that succeeded the KGB, over scores of trips to Chechnya that exposed Russian brutality in the province and detailed the horrific conditions of ordinary Russian soldiers there.
She received many threats and survived an alleged attempt to poison her tea on a flight in 2004.
Her son regularly checked her car for bombs and she knew death was a possibility. "If it happens, it happens," she told The Daily Telegraph this summer. Last December, she told a conference on press freedom: "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying out loud what they think."

Few are confident a police investigation will uncover the truth. No other journalist's murder in the past six years has been solved.
But the killing of so famous a figure, two weeks after the murder of the reforming deputy head of the central bank, Andrei Kozlov, has convinced some that hard-liners in the Kremlin have begun to act with impunity as 2008 presidential elections draw closer.
"Those who killed her were absolutely convinced that it is now possible in Russia to do such things openly, without even bothering to camouflage it as an accident," said a former dissident, Sergey Grigoryants.

[align=left]Murdered Russian Journalist Was Finishing Article on Torture in Checnnya â?? Editor
Mos News | October 9 2006
A journalist shot to death in an apparent contract killing was about to publish a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya when she was slain, her editor said Sunday as Russiaâ??s top prosecutor took charge of the case, AP reports. [/align]
Anna Politkovskaya, famed for her unsparing coverage of abuses against civilians in Chechnya in the outspoken newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was found dead Saturday in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. She had two gunshot wounds â?? one to the head.
Politkovskaya, 48, had collected witness accounts and photos of tortured bodies and the article had been due for publication Monday, her newspaperâ??s editors said.
â??We never got the article, but she had evidence about these (abducted) people and there were photographs,â?� Novaya Gazetaâ??s deputy editor, Vitaly Yerushensky, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
In a recent radio interview, Politkovskaya said that she was a witness in a criminal case against Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose security forces have been accused of kidnapping civilians and other abuses.
â??These are cases of kidnappings, including one criminal case concerning an abduction personally involving Ramzan Kadyrov, a kidnapping of two people, whose photographs are now on my desk,â?� she said in comments rebroadcast Sunday by Ekho Moskvy.
In the interview, which Ekho Mosvky said had been granted to Radio Free Europe, she said that the victims, an ethnic Russian and a Chechen, were â??rounded up, kidnapped for a time and killed. Their bodies showed signs of serious torture.â?�
Politkovskaya was one of the most persistent critics of Kadyrovâ??s security forces, but she had crossed many powerful people, including in the Russian military, with her investigative reporting and human rights advocacy.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was shocked and profoundly saddened by the murder of a journalist who devoted much of her career to â??shining a light on human rights abuses and other atrocities of the war in Chechnyaâ?� and the plight of Chechen refugees.
â??One thing that immediately comes to mind ... is that Anna had many enemies, said Joel Simon, executive director of the New-York based CPJ.
On its Web site, the biweekly Novaya Gazeta wrote that the killing was either revenge by Kadyrov or an attempt to discredit him.
The execution-style killing underlined the increasingly dangerous environment for journalists working in Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, launching a crackdown on media freedoms. Her death brings to at least 13 the number of journalists killed in contract-style killings in the past six years, according to the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Politkovskayaâ??s death was the most high-profile slaying of a journalist in Russia since the July 2004 assassination of Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika on Sunday took personal charge of the investigation, his office said, citing the â?�particular importance (of the case) and wide resonance within society.â??
The Interfax news agency quoted law enforcement sources as saying that investigators would include the â?�Chechen trailâ?? as part of their probe into Politkovskayaâ??s death.
Her colleagues at the hard-hitting newspaper said that they would launch their own investigation, reflecting skepticism that the official inquiry would ever find the killers.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev condemned the journalistâ??s killing as â?�a blow to the entire, democratic, independent press.â??
The 46-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog whose executive body is currently led by Russia, called for her death to be investigated quickly and convincingly.
Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said he was â?�shockedâ?? at Politkovskayaâ??s killing, Interfax reported.
Politkovskaya had come under threat repeatedly. In 2004, she fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan. Her colleagues suspected the incident was an attempt on her life.
Politkovskaya, who had two adult children, began reporting on Chechnya in 1999 during Russiaâ??s second military campaign there, concentrating less on military engagements than on the human side of the war.
Despite the end of large-scale fighting, Russia remains locked in guerrilla conflict with a hardcore of separatist rebels and allegations of kidnappings, torture and murder of civilians blamed on Russian forces and their Chechen allies persist.