Moscow - Russia's Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the acquittals verdict on four suspects in the politically-charged murder trial of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, with the case to be retried, the Interfax agency reported.

The agency said the top court's judges agreed to the appeal submitted by the general prosecutor's office of the February 19 acquittal verdict reached by a jury in a lower Moscow court.

The jury had agreed with defence claims of insufficient evidence tying the four suspects to the crime.

Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic and investigative journalist for the Novaya Gazeta, was ggunned down in a contract-style killing in her Moscow apartment block in October 2006.

In the trial, prosecutors had accused two Chechen brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov of being accomplices and former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov of helping the killer get away.

The fourth defendant, Pavel Ryaguzov, was acquitted in a separate case. Ryaguzov, an agent of Russia's FSB security service, was accused of providing the killer with Politkovskaya's address.

The award-winning Politkovskaya reported on human rights abuses by the Russian forces during two wars in Chechnya in the early 1990s.

Her killing shocked the international community and raised concerns about crackdowns on Kremlin-critical reporters under former president Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister. (dpa)