Russia

Stalina Gurevich, lawyer for newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who was attacked and brutally beaten on November 13, has announced a reward for information on those who instigated or carried out the attack and condemned lack of progress in the investigation. She joined Andrei Stolbunov, vice-president of the human rights organisation Spravedlivost (Justice) in offering a reward of 500,000 roubles...

A Russian judge has lifted a ban on journalists covering the trial of three men accused of helping to murder journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya even as prosecutors asked for his removal over his flip-flops on media coverage. Judge Yevgeny Zubov ruled last week that the politically charged trial would be held behind closed doors, drawing fierce criticism from Politkovskaya's family...

A member of the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial jury has denied that the jury had asked for the press and public to be excluded, saying it was the clerk of the court who asked them to sign a statement to this effect which they had not drafted. The jury member said this in an interview to independent radio station Echo Moskvy, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Juror Yevgeny Kolesov told...

Moscow prosecutors say they have warned the Russian-language edition of the Newsweek magazine for allegedly insulting Muslims, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. [ Link] The Moscow Prosecutor's Office says the magazine published two stories that could be "insulting or humiliating" to Muslims. It said Tuesday an article also included one of the 2005 Danish cartoons depicting the prophet...

Russian prosecutors are launching inquiries across the country against news media reporting on the financial crisis in a bid to stem growing concern about its impact, Moscow-based business newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday. "It's not censorship. We're just checking how reliable the information is," a press official from the prosecutor general's office was quoted as saying by Agence France...

A Moscow court has reversed an earlier decision and barred the public and media from the trial of four men accused of murdering journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Yevgeny Zubov, the presiding judge in the trial of four men for the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, Wednesday ruled that the press and public will henceforth be excluded, reversing the decision he took on the first...

Four men went on trial Monday in connection with the murder of Russian journalist and outspoken Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, despite the failure of the authorities to catch the masterminds. The four have been charged with helping organise the October 2006 shooting of Politovskaya at her apartment block in central Moscow. In a victory for Politkovskaya's lawyers who had feared the process...

A district court in russia has ordered a newspaper to refute information, apologise and pay moral damages in defamation case, the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) has said, quoting delayed reports. On October 10, the Ufa Oktyabrsky District Court issued a ruling in the defamation lawsuit filed by Justice Rosa Gilyazitdinova against newspaper Chas Pik. Na Magistrali...

The editor-in-chief of a small and vocal opposition newspaper in the Moscow suburbs, who fought a campaign to protect a forest from destruction by real-estate developers, is in critical condition after being assaulted and beaten outside his home. Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, was found unconscious after being badly beaten on Thursday near his home in the...

Russian newspaper Arsenyevskiye Vesti has received an official warning from the prosecutor's office of the Vladivostok Frunzensky district, which accused it of disseminating materials containing elements of extremism. The warning was issued over an article titled 'One Nation - One Constitution' published in the 3-9 September 2008 edition of Arsenyevskiye Vesti. The article dealt with the killing...