Politkovskaya investigation 'farce' - family

The probe into the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has become a "farce" that shows the government's indifference to solving her death, her family said yesterday.

The angry comments by Ms Politkovskaya's two children, in a letter published by the reporter's former paper the Novaya Gazeta, came after a court last week rejected their appeal for a new probe into the 2006 killing.

"This nearly three-year-long inquiry has finally become a farce whose goal is to distract the public's attention from the main question: 'Who ordered the murder?'," the Novaya Gazeta letter read.

The court's rejection of their appeal meant that a new trial will continue with three suspects who were acquitted in a previous trial earlier this year and who are not accused of ordering or carrying out the killing.

Ms Politkovskaya's children, Ilya and Vera, also expressed outrage that they would be forced to appear at the "pointless" hearings.

"We do not think it necessary to take an active role in this spectacle," they wrote. "The current proceedings... are evidence of only one thing: the government is flaunting its complete indifference to solving the crime... In fact, it is covering up for the real killers."

Ms Politkovskaya, who was sharply critical of Russia's strongman Vladimir Putin and his policies in Chechnya, was shot in an apparent contract-style killing in the stairwell of her central Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006.