The New York Times reported today that French police discovered toxic mercury pellets in the car of human rights lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, one day before pretrial hearings in Moscow into the murder of one of her best-known clients, journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya.
Politkovskaya’s writing garnered worldwide attention for her coverage of the brutal conflict in Chechnya. She published hundreds of articles in Novaya gazeta, some of which are collected in A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya published in 2003.
On October 7, 2006 Anna Politkovskaya was found shot to death in her Moscow apartment. As she was a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, Chechen Prime Minister (now President) Ramzan Kadyrov, and both sides in the Chechen wars, speculation as to possible political motives for her death abounded. In August of 2007 ten suspects were arrested. Three of those suspects—including two Chechen brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and a former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov—were set to go on trial, with preliminary hearings beginning today. The judge refused a request to delay the trial until Ms. Moskalenko recovered from mercury poisoning.
To find out more about the recent developments in the case of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya read the New York Times article. To find out more about Politkovskaya’s writing, read an excerpt from her book: “Russia’s Secret Heroes”.