Moscow  - Artists, journalists and human rights activists were among 800 people to gather in Moscow to commemorate the third anniversary of the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Wednesday, Russian media reported.

Russian Prime Minister and former president Vladimir Putin was the object of ire among the demonstrators, calling for a "Russia without Putin."

Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic and investigative journalist who reported war crimes in the Russian autonomous region of Chechnya, was shot dead before her home on October 7, 2006.

In February 2009, a jury in a lower Moscow court returned a verdict of acquittal for four suspects on the basis of insufficient evidence tying them to the crime.  dpa