Moscow - New investigations into the 2006 murder of Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya were ordered by Russia's highest court Thursday, reversing a lower court decision from August, the Interfax news agency reported . Politkovskaya's family had appealed the August 7 decision by a Russian military court, which had ruled that no new evidence was needed in the retrial. The retrial was itself ordered by the Supreme Court after an appeal from the state prosecutor's office to overturn a previous acquittal against suspects in the case.
A government spokesman confirmed the decision, which means the prosecutor's office is now charged with the new investigations. The prosecutor's office had also appealed the decision to block new investigations.
The four men on trial face charges as accomplices in the contract- style slaying in Politkovskaya's Moscow apartment block on October 7, 2006. They were freed in February due to lack of evidence.
In the initial trial, prosecutors had accused two Chechen brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, of being accomplices and former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov of helping the killer get away.
The fourth defendant, Pavel Ryaguzov, was acquitted in a separate case. Ryaguzov, an agent of Russia's FSB security service, was accused of providing the killer with Politkovskaya`s address.
The identity of those who had ordered Politkovskaya's killing is still unknown.
