Four men charged in connection with the killing of outspoken Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya entered not guilty pleas at their trial, a lawyer for one of the defendants told AFP on Wednesday.

`All four pleaded not guilty,` said Murad Musayev, a lawyer representing Dzhabrail Makhmudov, who has been accused of monitoring the journalist`s movements before she was shot dead outside her home in Moscow in 2006.