Former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev has spoken up in support of the work of the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. He joined a group of her editors, friends and family at the Moscow launch of a book of Politkovskaya's writings, most of which reveal the brutality and corruption within the government of President Vladimir Putin, and the horrors and endemic crime that have accompanied the wars in Chechnya.
Gorbachev, co-owner of Novaya Gazeta, the paper for which Politkovskaya worked, said: "There is a great need for such people [as Politkovskaya]. Maybe now the need is even greater than before." Of her book, he said: "It is bitter. But it is a medicine." (Via International Herald Tribune)
