Russian Impunity

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...

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...

The Ingush supreme court has ordered the release of the policeman who fatally shot Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru news website, on August 31, 2008, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. By reducing the gravity of the charge on which Ibragim Yevloyev (no relation) was convicted, the court was able to commute his two-year jail sentence to two years of “supervised residence...

More than 1,000 people took part in Tuesday's rally in Moscow in homage to journalist Anastasia Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov on the first anniversary of their murder. Young anti-fascist activists, representatives of human rights NGOs and above all ordinary citizens made up the unusually large crowd that defied freezing temperatures and marched with photos of Baburova and...

Prominent Russian journalist Olga Kotovskaya was killed after she apparently fell from the 14th floor of a building in the centre of Kaliningrad (the capital of a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania) six days after a court ruled that she had been unfairly stripped of the TV station she had created, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Kotovskaya died on November 16, six days...

A journalist known for his critical commentary has been killed in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Abdulmalik Akhmedilov, 32, was shot in his car at around 1 p.m. local time Tuesday on the outskirts of Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, the independent Caucasus news website Kavkazsky Uzel reported. The Dagestan Investigative Committee, the region's investigative office, has opened a...

A Moscow military court has decided to press on with the retrial of three alleged accomplices in Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, rejecting a petition by the Politkovskaya family for it to be postponed while further investigations were carried out. Presiding judge Nikolai Tkachuk on Friday denied the request although it was supported both defence lawyers and prosecutors. “We are...

Three suspects in the murder of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya went on trial for a second time in Moscow Wednesday, according to news reports. No one has been sentenced for the October 2006 killing of Politkovskaya, who published scathing exposes of official corruption and rights abuses. The three alleged accomplices, the only people so far charged in connection with the murder...