MOSCOW, October 7. /TASS/. Everybody would like all those responsible for the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya to be identified and punished, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. He added that many crimes were very hard to investigate and the Kremlin would not comment on the investigators' efforts.
In these words Peskov answered media questions about the Kremlin's opinion of the results of the investigation of Politkovskaya's killing. The journalists recalled that the statute of limitations for this particular case expired on Thursday, while the masterminds of the crime had not been established yet.
"We do not make comments and do not wish to make comments on the investigators' work. Everybody knows very well that many crimes, in particular, contract crimes, are very hard to solve and very often their investigation takes many years. Of course, all of us would like the perpetrators, the masterminds and the attackers, to be identified and punished," Peskov said.
Asked if that meant that the Kremlin would like the investigation to be prolonged, Peskov said that he was unable to "competently assess the legal opportunities for such prolongation."
"This is no competence of mine. It goes without saying, though, that if there is a legal opportunity for this, then the inevitability of punishment for such crimes is the top priority after all," he concluded.
The Novaya Gazeta daily's investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in the lobby of the apartment building where she lived in a rented flat. The incident occurred on Moscow's Lesnaya Street on October 7, 2006. A court named five accomplices to the killing and sentenced them to different prison terms, but those who had put a contract on Politkovskaya remain unknown.