Some police officials in Chechnya are under criminal investigation for a possible role in the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist, a New York-based news media rights group said here on Tuesday.
The assertion, by the Committee to Protect Journalists, cast fresh attention on the possibility of an official role in a crime that was roundly condemned in the West, and drew a series of swift denials from Russian and pro-Kremlin Chechen officials.
Ms. Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the independent liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was killed in her apartment building in October, apparently in a contract murder.
She had written pointedly against the Kremlin under President Vladimir V. Putin, and often exposed abuses by Russian forces and the Kremlin’s proxies in Chechnya, the Russian republic that has suffered a separatist war, banditry and an insurgency influenced by militant Islamic fighters.
Her final article, published posthumously, made further allegations that Chechen police officers had tortured people in custody, and fueled speculation that she may have been killed to prevent its publication or as a punishment for her reporting.
In a news conference and a subsequent telephone interview, Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said an official at the Russian Foreign Ministry had told a delegation from his organization that prosecutors were investigating whether police officials had been involved in the killing.
Mr. Simon said it was not clear from the official’s statement whether the police officials being investigated were Chechen or Russian.
The Russian and Chechen governments reacted quickly. The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that the committee’s statement “did not correspond with the facts.”
Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the young former rebel who is now the pro-Kremlin Chechen premier, vigorously denied that Chechen police officials had been involved.
“Anna Politkovskaya was a journalist, a person in a peaceful profession, and Chechen policemen are not fighting peaceful people,” he said, according to Interfax, a Russian news agency. “Their goal is to fight terrorists.”
Mr. Kadyrov, who has commanded paramilitary formations of former rebels, has often been accused of brutality and criminality. He also has been called a possible suspect in Ms. Politkovskaya’s death by some of her supporters. She had often published investigations about him and his forces.
He has always emphatically denied committing any crimes.
Mr. Simon stood by his group’s account of the Russian statements after it had been challenged, saying there were several witnesses in the room, and stressing as well that the possible role of police officials was one of several lines of inquiry. The delegation included Paul E. Steiger, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and chairman of the committee’s board.
“This is what they said,” Mr. Simon said. “We thought it was our role to be as public as possible about the meetings we had, and this was our effort to report information to the public.”
He said the delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists had left the meeting encouraged that an investigation was under way, suggesting that the crime could be solved. The group ranks Russia as one of the most dangerous places for journalists.
