Russia

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Russian authorities to immediately investigate a death threat that was sent to a human rights research center. In an email, a neo-Nazi group threatened to murder a number of journalists and intellectuals in the next year, according to the recipient of the threat. The sender told Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the human rights research center...

Seven people were arrested on Sunday after taking part in a tribute to slain human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova in which flowers were lain at the spot where they were gunned down in the centre of Moscow on January 29. Interior ministry Omon anti-riot police arrested them on the grounds that they were holding an “unauthorised” demonstration. Human...

A 72-year-old Russian journalist, critical of local authorities, has been severely assaulted. Authorities must launch a serious investigation into the attack on Yuri Grachev, editor of pro-opposition weekly Solnechnogorsky Forum, who is hospitalized with a concussion, broken nose, and lacerated cheek, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday. An initial statement from authorities, which...

The Evening Standard on Wednesday said Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev has bought a controlling 75.1 per cent stake in the venerable but money-losing paper for a "nominal sum" widely reported to be $1.40. After weeks of rumours, Standard owner Daily Mail & General Trust PLC confirmed that a company formed by Lebedev and his 28-year-old son, Evgeny, would acquire 75.1 per cent of London's...

The shocking murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and young journalist Anastasia Barburova on Monday brings Russia's human rights record to a new low, press freedom groups have said. The crime is compounded by the knowledge that Russia has a culture where impunity reigns and murderers are rarely brought to justice, ARTICLE 19 and Index on Censorship have said. Even in the case of a journalist as...

A human rights lawyer well-known for his work on abuses in Chechnya, Stanislav Markelov, and Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot to death Monday in broad daylight by a masked gunman who trailed Markelov from a press conference in Moscow. Markelov had at the January 19 press conference condemned the early release of Yuri Bodanov, a Russian former colonel who was sentenced in 2003...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on authorities in the northern Russian city of Murmansk to thoroughly investigate the death of Shafig Amrakhov, editor of the online regional news agency RIA 51. Amrakhov died in a Murmansk hospital on January 5, having slipped into a coma after at least one unidentified assailant shot him in the head several times a week earlier. The type of...

Russian authorities should promptly investigate the attack on Zhanna Akbasheva, a correspondent for the Regnum news agency in the republic of Karachai-Cherkessia, in Russia's North Caucasus, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Akbasheva told CPJ that two men attacked her at around 5 p.m. on December 22 when she was walking toward the office of a state-funded Cherkess-language...

If state impunity itself over the scores of unsolved murder cases of journalists in Russia was not enough, press freedom groups now have to even prove that the killings were indeed murders. The death of Magomed Yevloyev, who succumbed to injuries in hospital after being shot on the temple while in police custody on August 31, had evoked criticism against the government and the police from

Citing the examination of “classified” material evidence, the presiding judge in the Anna Politkovskaya murder case trial again barred on Thursday the press and public from the hearing. The trial was re-opened for both on Friday. A witness testifying in the trial said on Friday that a bounty of $2 million was paid to carry out the killing. Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who had previously served 12 years in...