A Russian court on Friday acquitted both defendants standing trial for the 2004 murder of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov, the Reuters news agency reported citing a lawyer for one of the defendants.
"The jurors have completely acquitted all of them on all charges. I am very pleased that (the jury) have worked out what’s what in this case and looked at all the evidence fully," said Ruslan Khasanov outside the courtroom.
Klebnikov was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. He was shot four times as he left his Moscow office in July 2004.
Reporters were not allowed into the courtroom.
The slaying of Klebnikov deepened concerns about media freedom in Russia and raised questions about who would want to kill Klebnikov, a journalist and author who investigated corruption and sought to shed light on the closed, sometimes violent world of Russian business.
The U.S. government and Klebnikov’s family, whose roots are in Russia, have urged prosecutors to investigate all angles thoroughly and stressed the importance of bringing those behind the killing, not just those who carried it out, to justice, The Associated Press reported.
Critics of Russia’s justice system, which came under fire during the trial of tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and is widely seen as lacking independence from the Kremlin, have said prosecutors failed to properly pursue other lines of investigation in the Klebnikov case.
