A man suspected of shooting Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 has been formally charged with murder, Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Thursday.
Markin said Rustam Makhmudov, who was arrested at his parents' home in Chechnya on Tuesday, was the "perpetrator of the killing."
"Investigators have now gathered enough evidence to prove his guilt," Markin told RIA Novosti.
"Makhmudov also committed a series of other crimes in the mid-1990s in Moscow, including kidnapping and extortion," he said.
Two of Makhmudov's brothers and a third suspect are currently awaiting trial over the killing in Moscow.
Politkovskaya, who won international acclaim for her investigation of Russian abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead in cold blood outside her home in Moscow on then-President Vladimir Putin's birthday in 2006.
Her reports were highly critical of the actions of the Kremlin leadership and the pro-Moscow Chechen authorities.
Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovksaya had worked, said it hoped the organizer of the killing would be found.
"I understand perfectly well that the search for the organizer takes quite a long time and view the arrest of Rustam Makhmudov as one step towards defining the person who was behind this crime," editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov said.
MOSCOW, June 2 (RIA Novosti)
