Russia

A Russian police officer who got off with a two-year suspended sentence for killing journalist Magomed Yevloyev in 2008 was shot dead by unknown assailants in the Ingush city of Nazran on Wednesday, investigators said. Two men armed with automatic rifles shot Ibragim Yevloyev, 35, and his colleague Beslan Albogachiyev in a downtown cafe, killing Yevloyev and seriously injuring Albogachiyev, a...

A measure signed into law on Thursday by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will expand the powers of security agents and contribute to a climate of fear among government critics, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The law grants the Federal Security Service (FSB) authority to detain for up to 15 days anyone suspected of planning a crime against Russian security, local and...

Russian editor Pyotr Lipatov has been exonerated of charges that he fomented extremism by publishing articles that created “negative stereotypes and negative images of members of the security forces,” among other faults. A court on Tuesday threw out the case against Lipatov saying that the the expert testimony that prosecutors had relied upon to prove that the articles were extremist was...

Elena Kostyuchenko, a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and Yury Timofeyev, a reporter for Prague-based Radio Liberty, were arrested while covering the violent dispersal of environmentalists who had camped out at Khimki forest, north of Moscow, in an attempt to prevent part of it being torn down, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Kostyuchenko and Timofeyev were taken to a...

In the year since former journalist Natalia Estemirova’s abduction and murder on July 15, 2009 in the Russian Caucasus, little progress has been made in the investigation. The impunity that prevails in cases of violence against journalists and human rights activists in Russia seems to have triumphed again. No suspect has yet been identified and key questions remain unanswered. Estemirova’s

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Russian authorities to disclose their progress in the investigation into the unsolved murder of Forbes Russia Editor Paul Klebnikov, left, who was gunned down outside his Moscow office six years ago on July 9 (2004). The case is with the federal Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor-General’s Office, which is responsible for conducting...

Five journalists with the Dagestani independent weekly Chernovik are being prosected, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Editor-in-Chief Nadira Isayeva and reporters Magomed Magomedov, Artur Mamayev, Timur Mustafayev, and Biyakai Magomedov are charged with incitement of hatred and demeaning the honour of law enforcement officials as a “social group” in several stories...

A sweeping new bill in Russia can return censorship rights to Russia’s KGB successor, the Federal Security Service, if passed, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Amendments to the country’s administrative code and the law on FSB activities would give the security agency the right to summon journalists for questioning and demand that editors remove articles that “aid extremists”...

Russian journalist Arkady Lander, editor-in-chief of independent newspaper Mestnaya (Local) has been brutally attacked in the southern city of Sochi, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Two unidentified men attacked Lander at his apartment as he returned from a grocery store at around 3 p.m. on Monday, the independent Caucasus region news website Kavkazsky Uzel reported...

Moscow’s Savyolovsky district court on April 21 ordered French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) to pay 250,000 rubles (6,000 euros) in damages to the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi for a September 2009 article about Nashi’s activities, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Nashi has also sued the French daily Le Monde, the British daily The Independent, and other media. The youth...