Journalists slam failure to investigate editor's murder in Dagestan

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

05 Dec 2012

Journalist Casualties: 0
Media Staff Casualties: 0
Under Investigation: 0

Journalists gathered in Moscow have slammed the failure to investigate the killing of an influential newspaper editor in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, the Russian new agency Interfax reported on 3 December.

Khadzhimurat Kamalov, founder of Dagestan's most influential weekly, Chernovik, was killed in December 2011. Speaking at a presser in Moscow on 30 November, Maksim Shevchenko, member of the presidential Human Rights Council, said that the murder of Khadzhimurat Kamalov and other journalists in Dagestan was not investigated properly.

"He [Khadzhimurat Kamalov] was killed brutally... nothing has been investigated, the prospects of exposing this political crime is extremely slim. Recently, 16 journalists have been killed in Dagestan and none of these crimes have been investigated. We believe that this topic should not be confined to the borders of Dagestan," Interfax quoted Maksim Shevchenko as saying. Shevchenko also criticized the media's failure to cover the murders of journalists.

Magdi Kamalov, who succeeded his murdered brother as Chernovik's editor, called for the Interior Ministry's intervention in the investigation of Khadzhimurat Kamalov's murder.

"We ask the Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to dispatch operative officers of the central apparatus of the Interior Ministry to Dagestan. The criminal case could be investigated faster if an interdepartmental group consisting of officers from the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service were created," Magdi Kamalov said.

Magdi Kamalov also spoke about the murders of other journalists, including Gadzhi Abashilov, Abdulmalik Akhmedilov, Garun Kurbanov.

The presser was also attended by Ali Kamalov, the Chairman of the Union of Journalists in Dagestan and Vsevolod Bogdanov, Chairman of the Union of Journalists in Russia.

Source: BBC Monitoring / Interfax news agency