THEY snickered and whispered in the defendants' cage while their lawyers wrangled over evidence - a ragtag pair of Chechen brothers and a crooked former cop, alleged lookouts and errand runners in a crime that has become a symbol of unsolved violence against some of Russia's most outspoken critics.
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On Thursday a Moscow jury acquitted the three men charged as accessories in the shooting death of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya. But there is a pervasive sense that the trial was tangential, the evidence was patchy and the Russian Government skimmed the edges of the crime rather than digging at its roots.
Missing from the courtroom was anyone accused of pulling the trigger, ordering the murder or paying for it.
Lawyers say evidence has linked the crime to the FSB, the modern-day equivalent of the KGB, but that it has failed to reveal how far up the ranks of intelligence services the plan to kill Politkovskaya reached.
Outside the military court the lawyer for the brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, praised the unanimous verdict and said the authorities should now catch the "real killer".
Yesterday Judge Yevgeny Zubov ordered state investigators to resume their murder investigation. "The criminal probe must return to the prosecutors' investigative committee with the aim of finding the individuals linked to the committing of this crime," he said.
The lawyer of those acquitted, Murad Masayev, called the three-month trial a "fiasco" for the investigative committee tasked with solving the crime.
"Crimes like this take away the best people in our society," he said. "The only way to stop these crimes is to catch the real criminals."
Asked who he thought had murdered the journalist, Mr Masayev said: "I really don't know. The investigators decided at some point to put these guys in jail and the real killers to stay unpunished."
A fourth defendant, an officer in the FSB, was acquitted in a related case.
Politkovskaya's family expressed disappointment at the verdict. Her son, Ilya, said he respected the jury's conclusions but, "having studied the materials in this case, I think the four people released today were involved in my mother's death. There are degrees of guilt and degrees of involvement."
Politkovskaya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment block on October 7, 2006.
Her columns had irritated the Kremlin for years, dredging up the Chechen wars and criticising the then president Vladimir Putin for creating an atmosphere of lawlessness.
Mr Putin complained that her death was more damaging to Russia's reputation than her investigative reports. The Government has since blamed the killing on forces abroad trying to undermine Russia's credibility.
During the trial prosecutors alleged that her assassin was a third Makhmudov brother, Rustam, who they said had fled Russia. The brothers on trial had staked out her flat and had given Rustam a lift to the scene, they said. A former Moscow policeman, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who has served time in prison for abusing his power, was accused of organising the killing.
The defendants, alleged gangsters, seemed dazed by their release. Asked what he would do next, Ibragim Makhmudov said: "I'm going to pray."
Friends of the murdered journalist said the investigation into her killing was inadequate. Police have apparently been unable to identify the person who ordered the assassination.
On Thursday Sergei Sokolov, the deputy editor at Novaya Gazeta, said the "corrupted" security services had deliberately hindered the investigation.
During the investigation, much relevant material disappeared, including SIM cards, computer disks and a photo of Rustam Makhmudov.
Los Angeles Times,
Guardian News & Media
