Italian junior Foreign Minister Mr Umberto Ranieri admitted in the Senate this week that there may have been a political motivation for the killing of radio reporter Antonio Russo, whose body was found on a country road, 25 km outside the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, 10 days ago.
Mr Russo (40), a veteran of frontline reporting in Rwanda, Colombia, Sarajevo and Kosovo, had been covering the guerrilla war in Chechnya for Radio Radicale, the station closely linked to Italy's Radical Party.
An autopsy revealed that Mr Russo had died after being beaten severely. The Tbilisi apartment he used as his work base was discovered to have been ransacked. His mobile phone, lap-top computer, video camera, video reports and other documents were missing.
Responding to a parliamentary question, Mr Ranieri said Georgian police authorities had offered Italy total co-operation, adding that Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze had described the death as "rather strange".
Mr Ranieri said: "One of the paths taken by the investigation is linked to the fact that the journalist was collecting documentation re the Chechnyan crisis, some of which might have been very controversial and which, if published, could have had serious repercussions."
Although Georgian police authorities at first suggested Mr Russo's death might have been the result of an armed robbery, friends and colleagues reject this theory, pointing out that Mr Russo was highly experienced and well able to look after himself.
Green Party Senator Stefano Bocco suggested Mr Russo's death was politically motivated when telling the Senate about a fax received from Mr Russo last February in which he spoke of the "experimental" use of landmines and chemical warfare by the Russian military in Chechnya.
Mr Russo first came to the attention of the Italian public during the early days of the Kosovo crisis last year when he chose to stay in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, even after NATO bombing began.
Although most non-Yugoslav reporters either left or were expelled, Mr Russo remained, going missing for several days. It was presumed he had been killed. Mr Russo got out of Pristina by blending in with ethnic Albanian refugees being loaded on to trains for deportation. He was spotted by a photographer from the Italian news agency, ANSA, who recognised him at a Macedonian border crossing.
Radio Radicale's website (www.radioradicale.it) contains Mr Russo's often disturbingly graphic war reporting, including a three-hour filmed report on the Chechnya war.
In his report, Mr Russo says: "My experience as a special correspondent has convinced me that in war, there are no losers and no winners. Both sides lose, through humiliation, loss of dignity and death . . . In war reporting, it is not always easy to distinguish the aggressor from the victim . . . (This film) shows some aspects of a forgotten war while trying to offer shelter to the rights of a forgotten people."