Prosecutor's office checked Politkovskaya's materials

The latest criminal cases on the articles by Anna Politkovskaya, murdered observer of the "Novaya Gazeta," were initiated back in spring this year, Sergey Sokolov, deputy editor-in-chief of "Novaya Gazeta," informed.

In particular, on April 24, the Chechnya prosecutor's office initiated a criminal case on the facts narrated in Anna Politkovskaya's article "Video First Night in Chechnya," published in "Novaya Gazeta" in March. The article contained a detailed description of three video tapes that got at the disposal of the paper and published certain frames of these tapes. In one of them, "a man looking like Ramzan Kadyrov" is commanding squeezing of a prisoner of war into a car luggage compartment. The second one shows the same man taking part in a group orgy in a bathhouse. In the third one - Chechen servicemen, whom the editorial board named "Kadyrovtsy," are beating soldiers of the federal troops. The criminal case was initiated on the latter episode; the remaining two are under examination.

During the same period, the prosecutor's office initiated cases on two more Anna Politkovskaya's publications - on land re-allocation in the Achkhoj-Martan District of Chechnya, and on shooting the marketplace in Grozny in 2002, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.