DPA/AFP

Moscow

Five people were found guilty on Tuesday in a Moscow court in the slaying of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, nearly eight years after she was shot dead.

A jury found the five men guilty of planning the killing on October 7, 2006, and firing the fatal shots as Politkovskaya entered the hallway of her apartment block in a crime that shocked the world and cast a shadow over President Vladimir Putin’s second term in office.

Sentencing for the five men, who have Chechen origins, which was scheduled for yesterday, was put off until May 27.

An award-winning investigative reporter for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya, was killed in the hallway of her apartment building October 7, 2006.

A critic of Putin, Politkovskaya had been reporting on human-rights abuses in Chechnya at the time of her murder.

Politkovskaya’s family said they were pleased with the convictions but said the question of who ordered her killing remains unanswered.

Yesterday rights campaigners called on the authorities to track down the mastermind behind the 2006 killing.

The head of Amnesty International’s office in Russia, Sergei Nikitin, said in a statement: “Authorities in Russia must demonstrate with concrete actions that they are trying to establish who wanted Anna Politkovskaya dead. Those who ordered her killing must be identified and face justice.”

Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov praised the “brilliant investigators” to Interfax news agency, but called for the “case to be reopened to find the mastermind of this monstrous crime”.

The guilty verdict came after an earlier trial of three of the same defendants ended in acquittals.

The supreme court then halted a retrial and sent the case back for further investigation.

Convicted of the murder were a former Moscow police officer and four Chechens from a single family, including Rustam Makhmudov, the man convicted of lying in wait for Politkovskaya and gunning her down.

A lawyer for Politkovskaya’s son Ilya and daughter Vera yesterday sued for compensation of 5mn rubles ($145,000) from the men convicted.