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 rights activists denied the claim. A total of 15 people took part in the tribute, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported.
Earlier, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev met on January 29 with Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitri Muratov and one of the newspaper’s main shareholders, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, to offer them his condolences for the January 19 murder of one of its reporters, Anastasia Baburova.
Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanlislav Markelov were gunned down together in central Moscow immediately after a news conference given by Markelov, in a double murder that has stunned human rights activists and journalists in Russia and abroad. The lack of any reaction from the Russian authorities was widely commented.
President Medvedev said his silence was motivated by a desire not to influence the investigation.
Markelov, who was aged 34, was buried on January 23 in Moscow. Baburova, 25, was buried three days later in Sebastopol. She was the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to meet a violent death in connection with her work.
