Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, quoted Monday a Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying that Russian prosecutors investigating the October murder of Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and the war in Chechnya, had opened a probe into Chechen police officials.
The Foreign Ministry said a diplomatic official had only told Simon that "the Russian Prosecutor General's Office is considering several versions, including Politkovskaya's professional activities."
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Friday that Russian military officers had brutally tortured two Chechen brothers who were held in detention in 2000 for suspected ties with Chechen gunmen. Adam and Arbi Chitayev said they owed their survival to an article written by Politkovskaya and to a rights group.
The ministry said, "as for the assumptions made in Politkovskaya's article, members of the Committee [to Protect Journalists] were told that prosecutors in Chechnya had launched their own inquiry into the case."
The Chechen Interior Ministry dismissed the media reports as "unsubstantiated."
"Reports that criminal cases have been launched against 'several police officers' are totally ungrounded," the ministry said. "The Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic does not have even indirect information suggesting that some of its officials could be involved in this crime."
Politkovskaya, 48, was gunned down in a lift in her apartment bloc in Moscow October 7, 2006 in an apparent contract killing. She had written a book on President Vladimir Putin and his policy in Chechnya, recounting widespread abuse of local civilians by federal troops.
