RUSSIA: New York, June 18, 2008—Three men have been charged in connection with the October 2006 assassination of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the Investigative Committee at Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office announced today. With these charges, investigators have completed a preliminary investigation into the journalist’s immediate killers, a spokesman for the committee said. However, separate probes…
New York, June 17, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces repeated efforts by authorities in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia to shut down the regional news Web site Ingushetiya—one of the few remaining independent news outlets covering the volatile North Caucasus—for alleged extremism. On June 6, Kuntsevo district court in Moscow ordered the closure…
New York, May 1, 2008–An amendment that would allow the Russian courts to close media outlets for publishing defamatory statements has made its way through the parliament’s lower house, according to local press reports. On April 25, the State Duma approved on a first reading a restrictive bill that would add the dissemination of “deliberately…
CPJ’s Impunity Index ranks countries where killers of journalists go free New York, April 30, 2008 — Democracies from Colombia to India and Russia to the Philippines are among the worst countries in the world at prosecuting journalists’ killers according to the Impunity Index, a list of countries compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists…
New York, April 24, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today at the harassment in Chechnya of Jane Armstrong, Moscow correspondent for the Canadian national daily The Globe and Mail. Armstrong and her Russian photographer and interpreter Olga Kravets had traveled from Moscow to the Chechen capital of Grozny to report on social and…
New York, April 24, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today at the harassment in Chechnya of Jane Armstrong, Moscow correspondent for the Canadian national daily The Globe and Mail. Armstrong and her Russian photographer and interpreter Olga Kravets had traveled from Moscow to the Chechen capital of Grozny to report on social and…
New York, April 8, 2008—A Russian district court judge on Monday acquitted a man accused in the killing of Vagif Kochetkov, Tula correspondent for the Moscow daily Trud and a columnist for the local newspaper Molodoi Kommunar, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. Prosecutors had charged Yan Stakhanov, a local businessman, with robbery and…
RUSSIA: New York, April 1, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday’s attack on Arseny Makhlov, founder of the independent weekly Dvornik, in the western city of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region. An unidentified assailant stabbed Makhlov twice in the back at around 7 p.m. as he was leaving a local restaurant, the journalist told CPJ. The…