By turning down the appeal from Politkovskaya's family, the retrial of three men who were acquitted of being accomplices in her murder can proceed.

"The request by the plaintiff cannot be satisfied," ruled judge Nikolai Tkachuk. He has ordered a jury for the retrial to be selected at hearings starting September 7.

Politkovskaya's family lawyers and prosecutors were surprised by the court's decision to override requests from Politkovskaya's children. They had hoped to put the trial on hold in order to give prosecutors more time to work on the case.

"We want further investigation and, then, one court for everyone involved, from the killer to the person who really ordered the murder," said Ilya Politkovskaya.

Karinna Moskalenko, a lawyer for the Politkovskaya family, said they would probably appeal the decision.

Muckraking journalist

Anna Politkovskaya, who was sharply critical of Russia's then-president, Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlin, was shot in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment building in 2006.

Her scathing exposes of official corruption and human rights abuses made her a target for many factions in Russian politics.

A deputy editor at Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper Politkovskaya wrote for, said that Russian authorities had only scratched the surface as far as their investigation was concerned.

He claimed there is evidence of a cover-up to conceal alleged links between the Chechen government and the Kremlin, and added that no one is really safe.

Politkovskaya's lawyer Stanislav Markelov was killed in January of this year, and more recently, the human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who was believed to have been a primary source for Politkovskaya's reports, was murdered execution-style. Her body was later found in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya.

Chechen involvement?

"I have no doubt that [Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov is behind the murder," said Oleg Orlov, the head of Russian human rights group Memorial for which Estemirova worked..

Kadyrov, who became president of Chechnya in 2007, is a popular man with the Kremlin. He is credited with eliminating the Chechen separatist movement and bringing relative calm to the region, which has been at war for the better part of 15 years.

Human rights groups around the world have called on western nations to exert more pressure on the Kremlin. They want to ensure that a thorough investigation is carried out into the alleged connection between the murders of journalists and human rights workers, and the Chechen president.

av/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Susan Houlton