Two arrested for murder of journalist and lawyer in Moscow

[clear eye]

Source: The Guardian

Human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasia Baburova were gunned down in Moscow this year

Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 15.58 GMT

Investigators today said they had solved one of Russia's most notorious killings and had arrested a man and a woman for the murders of the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova...Markelov – a friend of the assassinated journalist Anna Politkovskaya – and Baburova were gunned down in January in central Moscow.

Today Russia's federal security service (FSB) named their killers as Eugenia Khasis, 24, and Nikita Tikhonov, 29. While Khasis appears to have no previous convictions, Tikhonov is a veteran neo-Nazi activist wanted in connection with the murder of an anti-fascist campaigner.

News of the arrests came as the human rights group Memorial said that gunmen loyal to Chechnya's pro-Kremlin president had abducted an activist in Moscow and flown him to Chechnya.

Chechen security officials grabbed Arbi Khachukayev this afternoon and then bundled him on to a flight to Chechnya's capital, Grozny, Memorial said. Its staff were deeply concerned for his safety, it added.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/stanislav-markelov-anastasia-baburova-murders

[pampango]

1. That's good news. Journalists have been targeted for murder. Hope the prosection is

successful.