Russia's supreme court yesterday overturned a not-guilty verdict for three men charged in connection with the 2006 killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and ordered a new trial, reports Isabel Gorst in Moscow.

The supreme court upheld the prosecutor's complaint that there had been "serious violations" during a trial in a Moscow district court in February where a jury returned the not-guilty verdict, provoking a storm of protest from the murdered woman's family and her former colleagues.