Moscow ? Russia’s highest court Thursday overturned the acquittal of three men in the killing of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov and ordered a new trial, a court spokesman said.

The court, acting on an appeal by prosecutors and the victim’s lawyers, said a new trial should be held with a new judge, said court spokesman Pavel Odintsov.

Klebnikov, 41, who was editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition, was gunned down in July 2004 on a Moscow street. Two men went on trial on charges of carrying out the killing on behalf of a Chechen separatist who was the subject of a critical book written by Klebnikov, but they and another man on trial on related charges were acquitted by a jury.

Prosecutors claimed the defendants, Kazbek Dukuzov, 32, and Musa Vakhayev, 42, had killed Klebnikov on behalf of Chechen separatist leader Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, who remains at large.