Monday, 17 November

On the day the trial opened a new provocation was promoted by certain media outlets, attorneys for the family of Anna Politkovskaya told Novaya gazeta. At an open court hearing attended by the press the attorneys that day had read out, word for word, a detailed statement about the shortcomings of the investigation. Nevertheless, the wording and sense of the text had then been distorted.

Among the shortcomings of the investigation, their statement said, was the failure to verify published comments by the President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov concerning Politkovskaya’s murder. Attorneys for the family, however, had not petitioned as reported in the press for Kadyrov to be cross-examined in court. Information being circulated by the media, therefore, distorted the statement made by the attorneys in court and it could not be excluded that the aim of such misrepresentation was to provoke conflict between Ms Politkovskaya’s family and the head of the Chechen republic.