Russian Impunity

Vadim Rogozhin, managing director of the independent media holding company Vzglyad in the southern city of Saratov, was hospitalised in serious condition on March 10 after surviving a brutal attack last week, his company said in an official statement, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Two unidentified assailants attacked Rogozhin, 38, as he was leaving an elevator at his...

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office has filed an appeal before the supreme court against the acquittal of three men who were accused in connection with the 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya. A jury found the three men not guilty on February 19 at the end of a trial before a Moscow military court. “We point out that the Politkovskaya murder has not been solved,” Reporters...

Three defendants in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya walked free out of the Moscow District Military Court Friday after a jury unanimously acquitted them of helping to organise the crime. The state prosecution said it will appeal the verdict, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. Those acquitted are Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police...

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...

The trial of four people accused of journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder resumed Tuesday last before a military court in Moscow after the latest of many adjournments. Marked by many irregularities, the trial has exposed gaps in the investigation and has raised the question why the case was handed over to a court so soon, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has said. “This trial has seen major...

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 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...