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A plainclothes policeman catches a woman during a police crackdown on prostitution in Quanzhou, Fujian province, October 29, 2011. China should remove criminal and administrative penalties against sex workers which often lead to serious police abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on May 14, 2013. The abuses include torture, beatings, physical assaults, fines and arbitrary detentions of up to two years, as well as a failure to investigate crimes against sex workers by clients, bosses and state agents, according to the report. Prostitution is not permitted under Chinese law, although the industry has boomed since the country launched economic reforms in 1978. REUTERS/Stringer

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Russia jails ex-policeman over murder of Putin critic

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1 of 2. Ex-policeman Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov arrives in court during a trial in Moscow December 14, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Anton Petrov

MOSCOW | Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:33am EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Friday sentenced a former policeman to 11 years in jail for his role in the 2006 killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin.

Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was sentenced for tracking Politkovskaya's movements and giving the killer the gun used to kill her in her apartment building in central Moscow.

The case has become emblematic of attempts to silence dissent under Putin. Politkovskaya, who was 58, was killed on the president's 54th birthday.

Politkovskaya had made enemies with her reporting on corruption across Russia and human rights abuses in Chechnya, where Moscow had waged two wars against separatists since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Pavlyuchenkov had struck a plea bargain for a reduced sentence, but Politkovskaya's children have said he should be forced to reveal the names of the people who ordered the killing.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove and Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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