Russia police charge several suspects in journalist murder News
Russia police charge several suspects in journalist murder

[JURIST] Russian authorities have charged at least four of the 10 suspects arrested [JURIST report] Monday in connection with last October's killing [JURIST report] of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive], a defense lawyer told reporters Tuesday. A spokesman from the office of Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika [official website, in Russian] has thus far declined to issue an official statement or identify those arrested. Reuters has more.

Politkovskaya, who had covered the crisis in Chechnya [BBC Q&A] for Novaya Gazeta [media website, in Russian] since 1999, was shot in the head and in the chest after returning to her Moscow apartment building last year. Politkovskaya was a well known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and authored two books on Chechnya. Immediately following Politkovskaya's death, Putin suggested that the murder was an outside plot to damage Putin's reputation.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

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