"Putin must clear up any suspicions of complicity on the part of his secret service"

The Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel must in her talk in Dresden on Tuesday with the Russian President Vladimir Putin call for an exhaustive investigation into the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.. "Putin must above all deal with the serious indication that his secret service might have been involved", said the GfbV General Secretary Tilman Zülch in Göttingen on Monday.

Zülch called on the Bundeskanzler not to shy clear of this topic and to demand clarity from Putin on the circumstances of the death of the journalist. She must also insist on the publication of the article by Politovskaya on torture in Chechnya, which was to have appeared in today´s edition of the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" together with documentary material from the investigators. Politkovskaya was found shot on Saturday in the passage of her house in Moscow.