Papewaio
01-19-2009, 22:58
Lawyer killed after opposing Russian colonel's release (http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/russian-rights-lawyer-killed/2009/01/20/1232213582532.html)
Law enforcement sources confirmed that Stanislav Markelov had been gunned down on a busy street in central Moscow, while a woman, Anastasiya Baburova, was hospitalised with a bullet wound to the head.
A spokeswoman for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta confirmed the death of intern reporter Baburova in hospital on Monday evening.
Following the lawyer's death, the prosecutor's investigative department said: "The investigation is studying various theories on the killing, including a link to the deceased's professional activities."
Baburova, 25, had written a number of reports on Russia's growing problem of racism and ultra-nationalism for Novaya Gazeta, the paper of the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in 2006.
Human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, said: "The murder in the centre of Moscow of a man, of a lawyer involved in cases of political importance, has as much significance as the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya."
Markelov and Baburova had just emerged from a press conference given by Markelov on the latest turn in the case of Elza Kungayeva, the 18-year-old Chechen whose 2000 strangling by Russian army colonel Yury Budanov became a cause celebre, highlighting systematic abuse by the Russian army in the war in Chechnya.
Hardliners seem to be the only ones who prosper out of violence.
Law enforcement sources confirmed that Stanislav Markelov had been gunned down on a busy street in central Moscow, while a woman, Anastasiya Baburova, was hospitalised with a bullet wound to the head.
A spokeswoman for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta confirmed the death of intern reporter Baburova in hospital on Monday evening.
Following the lawyer's death, the prosecutor's investigative department said: "The investigation is studying various theories on the killing, including a link to the deceased's professional activities."
Baburova, 25, had written a number of reports on Russia's growing problem of racism and ultra-nationalism for Novaya Gazeta, the paper of the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in 2006.
Human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, said: "The murder in the centre of Moscow of a man, of a lawyer involved in cases of political importance, has as much significance as the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya."
Markelov and Baburova had just emerged from a press conference given by Markelov on the latest turn in the case of Elza Kungayeva, the 18-year-old Chechen whose 2000 strangling by Russian army colonel Yury Budanov became a cause celebre, highlighting systematic abuse by the Russian army in the war in Chechnya.
Hardliners seem to be the only ones who prosper out of violence.