According to the police, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered Saturday night in central Moscow, and a Makarov pistol and four spent cartridges were discovered at the scene.
"The pistol and the cartridges have been sent for ballistics tests to establish whether Politkovskaya was indeed murdered with this weapon or it was simply dropped at the scene to mislead the investigators," a source with the investigation team said.
The investigation considers the journalist's professional activity as one of the most probable causes of the crime.
"The operatives started following the professional angle from the very beginning of the investigation," a police source said, adding that a common murder has not been ruled out either.
Prosecutors earlier said an unknown person clad in black opened fire on Politkovskaya at 17.15 Moscow time (1:15 p.m. GMT) after apparently waiting for the reporter at an elevator to her apartment on Lesnaya Street in downtown Moscow.
They also said the killer knew an entry code to her building and was aware of her movements and time schedule during the day.
"It was a premeditated and well-planned crime," the police source said. "However, it is not clear why the killer did not destroy a surveillance camera and did not attempt to hide his face."
The source said the killer could be simply eliminated by those who possibly ordered the murder.
Investigators continued gathering evidence though the night in Politkovskaya's apartment an at her office at the Novaya Gazeta premises.
Novaya Gazeta journalists will conduct an independent investigation into the murder of Politkovskaya, who has been providing extensive and independent coverage of the situation in Chechnya since 1999, said Oleg Khebnikov, the newspaper's deputy editor-in-chief.
The U.S. State Department and a number of international human rights organizations, including the Amnesty International and Freedom House, have urged the Russian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into a murder of the independent journalist, who was well-known in the West, and bring justice upon the perpetrators of the crime.
