Russia Reopens Case Of Dead Journalist

Yuri Shchekochikhin

Police are reopening the case of a Russian opposition journalist and politician seven years after his mysterious death.

Interfax news agency reports today that a spokesman for the investigators said that Yuri Shchekochikhin might have been murdered.

The journalist worked for the opposition newspaper "Novaya Gazeta," which also employed investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006.

Shchekochikhin died in July 2003 of what was at the time described as water on the brain.

Political allies voiced the suspicion he had been poisoned because of his reporting about corruption.

compiled from agency reports