Campaigners mark Politkovskaya murder anniversary

By Conor Sweeney

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Campaigners plan a series of events in Moscow and around the world on Sunday to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to catch the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, murdered a year ago.

A fierce critic of Putin, the mother of two was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow apartment building on October 7 last year as she returned from shopping. No one has been convicted of her killing.

"Anna, even when she was alive, was the symbol of distinguished journalism and the symbol of not just the freedom of the press, but freedom in general," Ludmilla Alexeeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group human rights organization, told Reuters.

Events in cities including New York, Paris and Rome, as well as Moscow, were being held in Politkovskaya's honor.

Her friends and colleagues plan to gather in central Moscow for a photo exhibition, a silent memorial and a special concert, and a commemorative edition of her newspaper Novaya Gazeta will be published on Monday.

Putin will be in the Russian capital, too, after cutting short his attendance at a summit of Commonwealth of Independent States leaders in Central Asia and plans to celebrate his 55th birthday with a Kremlin party for top officials and friends.

Russian police briefly detained five foreign citizens who had planned to attend a human rights forum in Nizhny Novgorod,

400 km (250 miles) east of Moscow, on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary.