A Moscow military court that is trying four men for journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder ruled today that the press and public will not after all be barred from the courtroom after one of the defendant’s lawyers, Murad Musayev, said the jurors were not opposed to an open trial, according to a Reporters Without Borders press-release forwarded to UNIAN.
The court had announced on 19 November, when the last hearing was held, that the trial would be held behind closed doors at the jury’s request. But the next day, in an interview for independent radio Echo Moskvy, one of the jurors denied that the jury had made any such request. The juror was dropped the jury today at his request.
When presiding judge Yevgeny Zubov adjourned the trial on 19 November, he scheduled the next hearing for 10 December. But a few days later, it was brought forward to today.
Musayev also told journalists a few minutes before the start of today’s hearing that the person who ordered Politkovskaya’s murder was a Russian politician. Yesterday, the head of the Russian prosecutor’s office investigation committee, Alexander Bastrykin, insisted that the identity of the person who ordered her murder was still unknown.
