Russia Media Murders Are Human Rights Crisis-OSCE

Russia's failure to solve the murders of journalists such as Anna Politkovksaya amounts to a human rights crisis, a European media freedom watchdog said on Thursday.

"The masterminds have never been put on the bench. The accused were not even the actual killers -- is it not possible to find them or convict them? This failure amounts to a human rights crisis," Miklos Haraszti, media freedom representative for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told Reuters in an interview.

A Russian court on Thursday acquitted three men accused of helping murder Politkovskaya, an outspoken Kremlin critic, in 2006. The man suspected of pulling the trigger is on the run and prosecutors have not identified who ordered the murder.