Twelve years ago this month, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist whose reporting came too close to the truth about Russia's war in Chechnya, was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment block. One year ago this month, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist whose reporting came too close to the truth about corruption in Malta, was murdered by a car bomb next to her house in Bidnija. Seven months ago, Jan Kuciak, a journalist whose reporting came to close to the truth about the mafia's role in Slovak business, was murdered in his home outside Bratislava.
The murderers in all these cases were contract killers.