"Several other Russians who investigated the 1999 bombings also have been killed, their murders so far unsolved. Legislator Sergei Yushenkov, who had set up an independent panel to investigate the bombings, was shot and killed in 2003. Later that year, another legislator and member of the panel, Yuri Shchekochikhin died in a Moscow hospital after contracting an illness that has yet to be explained.
Shchekochikhin also was a high-ranking editor of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the few remaining forums for dissenters in Russia. Last month, Anna Politkovskaya, a famed Novaya Gazeta journalist who had criticized Putin and the war in Chechnya and was investigating government corruption, was shot to death in Moscow. At the time of his poisoning, Litvinenko was investigating Politkovskaya’s slaying. On his deathbed, in a London hospital, he blamed Putin for killing him."