August 28, 2007	Tuesday	Sha’aban 14, 1428

MOSCOW, Aug 27: Russia on Monday announced 10 arrests in the killing of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, blaming her murder and other high-profile crimes on a foreign-based campaign to destabilise President Vladimir Putin.

Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika told Putin in a televised meeting that police had made “serious progress”. “To date we have arrested 10 people. In the very near future they will be charged with committing this serious crime,” he said in the comments shown on NTV television.

He appeared to point the finger at exiled Putin critics, saying that those behind the October 2006 killing were abroad.

“The individuals interested in eliminating Politkovskaya can only be ones living beyond Russia’s borders,” Chaika later told reporters.

“It’s useful above all to people and structures that are aimed at destabilising the country and undoing the constitutional order in Russia.” He also said the same group of killers may have been behind the 2004 murder of another journalist, US citizen Paul Klebnikov, and the murder in Moscow last year of the central bank’s deputy chief.“As our probe shows, the string of murders that took place were the same type of provocation,” Chaika said. “It’s not a first attempt. There is a list of previous murders that were similar provocations.” According to Chaika, those carrying out the murders were led by an ethnic Chechen, but the motivation was “aimed at provoking external pressure on our country’s leadership”. Chaika’s comments appeared to refer especially to outspoken Kremlin critic and exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky, who has political asylum in Britain, and has repeatedly called for Putin to be forced from office.

The Politkovskaya murder was one of a series of major blows in late 2006 to the Kremlin’s image, coming just before the lethal radiation poisoning in London of fugitive Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, which the Kremlin has also painted as an attack on Russia.

The announcement of 10 arrests was the first major breakthrough since she was gunned down in the stairwell to her Moscow apartment building as she returned from shopping.

Politkovskaya’s former employers welcomed the apparent breakthrough. Sergei Sokolov, editor in chief at Novaya Gazeta, praised what he said was a “high-level professional” investigation.—AFP