• Investigator: Russian journalist's killer is known

Politkovskaya

MOSCOW - After a year and nearly a dozen arrests, the main mystery in the slaying of a Russian journalist strongly critical of the Kremlin remains unsolved — who ordered her killed, the chief investigator said in an interview published Monday.

Investigators know who pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting of Anna Politikovskaya at her Moscow apartment building, Petros Garibyan, a senior investigator in the Prosecutor General's Office, told the newspaper she worked for, Novaya Gazeta.

"As for those who ordered it, we have interesting suggestions, let's put it this way," he was quoted as saying. But he would not reveal what, if anything, investigators know about who might have ordered the slaying.

Politkovskaya's persistent reporting of atrocities by security forces against civilians in the restive Chechnya region angered the Kremlin, but won her international acclaim.