3:37pm UK, Thursday February 19, 2009

Three defendants in the murder trial of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya have been found not guilty.

A Moscow memorial to Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya

The 48-year-old – a fierce critic of the Kremlin – was killed on a Saturday afternoon in October 2006.

She had returned to her apartment block after a shopping trip and was shot four times – once in the head and three times in the body.

Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and a former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were accused of helping organise and arrange the contract-style killing.

They were charged with murder and could have been imprisoned for life if convicted.

But a jury in Moscow has acquitted the three men.

Sky News Russia correspondent Alex Rossi said the verdict was an embarrassing defeat for prosecutors.

“This trial had all the hallmarks of a show trial,” he said. “But unlike a show trial, this ending is not what the state would have wanted.

“Questions will be asked – what have they been doing for the past two years? How could their investigations have come up with so little?”

Ms Politkovskaya was one of the former presidentVladimir Putin‘s fiercest critics.

She once wrote: “We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss… As a journalist it is total servility to Putin.

“Otherwise it can be death, the bullet, poison or trial – whatever our special services, Putin’s guard dogs see fit.”

That Ms Politkovskaya was killed on Mr Putin’s birthday fuelled claims of state complicity.

Many people believe her murder was connected to her fearless reporting in Chechnya.

Her accusations about corruption and human rights abuses frequently angered the now President Ramzan Kadyrov and officials in Moscow.

The Kremlin claims she was gunned down as part of a ploy to discredit the Russian state.