MOSCOW, September 16 (RAPSI) – A Moscow court on Monday removed a female juror from a trial into the murder of prominent journalist Anna Politkovskaya after concluding that the juror had told her colleagues that the defendants would be “imprisoned under any circumstance,” the RAPSI legal news agency reported from the courtroom.
Prosecutor Maria Semyonenko applied for the juror’s removal, according to the bailiff’s report. “We are impelled to call for her removal, with the aim of clarity of the verdict, although she spoke in our favor,” the prosecutor said.
Novaya Gazeta newspaper journalist Politkovskaya was shot and killed in her apartment building on October 7, 2006. Her murder has been linked by some experts to her coverage of human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The five suspects include former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, as well as Rustam, Ibragim, and Dzhabrail Makhmudov, and their uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev. The investigators believe that Rustam Makhmudov committed the murder with the help of his brothers Ibragim and Dzhabrail, their uncle, and Khadzhikurbanov.
