clipped from: seattletimes.nwsource.com MOSCOW — A crime ring aided by rogue police murdered famed journalist Anna Politkovskaya last year on behalf of outsiders bent on discrediting the Kremlin, Russian authorities said Monday, though the reporter's editors dismissed the government's assertion about motive.
Politkovskaya, 48, was regarded as Russia's most fearless investigative journalist and one of the Kremlin's fiercest critics. Not long after the reporter's slaying, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that people outside Russia may have engineered her murder to tar the Kremlin's image. Though Putin didn't name names, he appeared to be pointing to Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch and staunch Kremlin critic now living in London.