MOSCOW — A Moscow jury acquitted three men on murder charges Thursday in the killing of investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya.
The unanimous not-guilty verdicts were an embarrassing defeat for prosecutors in a trial compromised from the start by the absence of the suspected gunman and any alleged mastermind behind the politically charged October 2006 killing.
Prosecutors vowed to appeal.
Ethnic Chechen brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov and a former Moscow police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, were accused of helping organize and arrange Politkovskaya's contract-style killing. All three were charged with murder and could have been imprisoned for life if convicted.
Politkovskaya's probing reports on atrocities in Chechnya and abuses by Russian authorities angered the Kremlin but won her international acclaim. Her shooting shocked the world and widened the rift between Moscow and the West, underscoring the risks run by independent journalists and government critics, while hardening the Kremlin's depiction of Russia as a nation beset by foes.
The female captain of the 12-member jury read out the verdicts after about two hours of deliberations at a military courthouse on Moscow's main pedestrian souvenir-shopping street, the Old Arbat. When the judge repeated that the defendants were acquitted, relatives of the Makhmudov brothers broke out into clapping and cries of "Bravo!"
"Thank God, thank the jury," said Ibragim Makhmudov, still in a courtroom cage shortly after the verdict. "There was no other possible outcome."
The judge later said the defendants were free to go, and they burst out of the cage and embraced relatives.
"We're glad," said defense lawyer Murad Musayev. "This is something that happens rarely in Russia. This is what I call justice."
But relatives and former colleagues of Politkovskaya have said that regardless of the verdict, justice will not be served until the triggerman and the mastermind who had her killed are prosecuted.