MOSCOW: Five men received long jail terms on Monday for the killing of prominent Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya after a trial that did not reveal who had masterminded the Russian journalist’s murder.

Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who uncovered state corruption and rights abuses, especially in Chechnya, was gunned down in the lobby of her Moscow apartment block at the age of 48 on Oct 7, 2006, President Vladimir Putin’s 54th birthday.

The Russian authorities denied any role in the killing, which caused international outrage.

The five men, convicted by a jury last month, exchanged nervous smiles in their glass-fronted courtroom cage before judge Pavel Melyokhin handed down the sentences.

He agreed to the prosecutors’ request to order life imprisonment for Rustam Makhmudov, found guilty of pulling the trigger, and his uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who organised the logistics. The other three received 12, 14 and 20 years.

Politkovskaya was one of nearly two dozen journalists murdered in Russia since 2000, but her case attracted special attention because of the brutality of the contract-style killing and the failure of the authorities — even now, after nearly eight years and several trials — to identify who ordered the assassination.

Kremlin critics and rights campaigners say the murder symbolises the weakness of the rule of law in Russia.

“I will be satisfied only when the person or people who ordered this will be sentenced,” said Politkovskaya’s son Ilya.

Her newspaper, the independent Novaya Gazeta, is still running its own investigation into the killing.

“For as long as the name of the mastermind is not known, there can be no talk of revealing the truth,” said its spokeswoman, Nadezhda Prusenkova.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2014