NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) – An opposition Internet news site
owner in Russia’s troubled Ingushetia region was fatally shot
on Sunday soon after being detained by police, and his
colleagues called for a rally to protest his death.
Magomed Yevloyev is one of the most high-profile
journalists to be killed in Russia since investigative reporter
Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead near her Moscow apartment in
2006, provoking condemnation of Russia’s record on media
freedom.
Yevloyev, owner of the http://www.Ingushetiya.ru website, was a
vocal critic of the region’s Kremlin-backed administration,
accused by opponents of crushing dissent and free speech.
A lawyer for the website — which survived repeated
official attempts to close it down — said police met Yevloyev
at the steps of the aircraft after he flew in to Ingushetia’s
airport, put him in a Volga saloon car and drove him away.
“As they drove he was shot in the temple… They threw him
out of the car near the hospital,” lawyer Kaloi Akhilgov told
Reuters by telephone.
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“He was discovered there and they quickly put him on the
operating table, which is where he died.”
Akhilgov said Yevloyev, who was in his thirties, flew from
Moscow to Nazran on the same flight as the Kremlin-backed local
leader Murat Zyazikov. A spokesman for Zyazikov could not be
reached for comment.
A posting on Yevloyev’s website called on “all those who
are not indifferent” to his killing to gather for a
demonstration in Nazran, Ingushetia’s biggest town where
Zyazikov’s opponents have clashed with riot police in recent
years.
“A preliminary investigation is being carried out into the
incident as a result of which M.Yevloyev was killed,” said
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigations unit of the
Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow.
Markin said police had tried to bring Yevloyev in for
questioning but that an incident occurred in which he received
a gunshot wound that led to his death.
Interfax news agency cited an unnamed law enforcement
source as saying Yevloyev was shot by accident and said
prosecutors had opened a criminal case for causing the death by
carelessness.
Akhilgov said he doubted the shooting was an accident. “It
was in no way a mistake,” he told Reuters.
Media freedom groups say Russia is one of the world’s most
dangerous countries for journalists.
Ingushetia is a poor, mainly Muslim, region in Russia’s
North Caucasus region and borders Chechnya, scene of a
separatist rebellion that has now been largely quelled.
Ingushetia’s leader, Zyazikov, has been struggling to
contain a low-level insurgency by Islamist militants. Opponents
accuse Zyazikov of persecuting opposition activists.
Zyazikov, a former security service officer in the local
KGB, has criticized the reporting by Ingushetiya.ru and brought
a court case earlier this year trying to close down the site.
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