Russia halts Klebnikov murder probe - document

* Lawyers told investigation halted - document

MOSCOW, June 30 (Reuters) - Russian detectives have halted an investigation into the high-profile murder of a U.S. reporter, defying calls from Washington for his killers to be brought to justice, according to a legal document.

The 2004 murder of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, drew widespread condemnation and underlined the dangers faced by reporters in Russia.

But his killers -- and those who ordered the murder -- are still on the loose after two men accused of the killing were acquitted by a jury at a 2006 trial.

The United States has repeatedly pressed Russia to bring Klebnikov's murderers to justice and U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to raise the issue with Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev at a summit next week in Moscow.

But the chief detective on the case said in a letter to lawyers representing Klebnikov's family that the murder investigation had been halted.

"I inform you that on 28 May 2009, the preliminary investigation into case 18/346222-05 on the murder of P. Klebnikov ... has been halted," the letter from Russia's chief investigator, Petros Garibyan. said. A copy of the document, dated June 1, was seen by Reuters.

A spokesman for the Prosecutor-General's main investigative unit declined comment. Garibyan declined comment.

A Russian legal source who refused to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case said the investigation had been resumed after new evidence, but a representative of the Klebnikov family said they had received no such notification.

Klebnikov, a U.S. citizen whose grandparents fled Russia during the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, reported on a world where Russian business, politics and organised crime overlap.

He was shot as he left his office in central Moscow on July 9, 2004. He later died of his injuries in a lift which stalled at a Moscow hospital.

The trial of two Chechens -- Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev -- whom prosecutors said had carried out Klebnikov's murder collapsed in 2006 when a jury acquitted them. The two men always said they were innocent.

Russia ordered a retrial but it was halted in 2007 because Dukozov could not be tracked down. Prosecutors have released no details about who is suspected of ordering the killing. Russia is ranked as the world's third most dangerous place for reporters by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which lists 50 journalists killed there since 1992. Only Iraq and Algeria had more. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Aydar Buribayev, editing by Richard Balmforth)