Word: markelov
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Moscow More Voices Silenced In a chilling reminder of the high cost of speaking out in Russia, a prominent human-rights lawyer and a journalist were gunned down by a masked assassin in broad daylight on Jan. 19. While authorities have no immediate suspects, the lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, had opposed the early release of a Russian officer convicted of killing a Chechen woman. More than 1,000 people gathered in Grozny, the Chechen capital, to condemn the shootings...
...After the slaying, Visa Kungayev, the father of the murdered Chechen woman, said Markelov had called him on Friday to tell him he was being threatened. "The first minute of the conversation, he said that people were calling his house, threatening him, threatening to kill him if he did not stop working on the Kungayeva case," Kungayev said, according to the Interfax news agency...
...Although investigators acknowledge that the murder in broad daylight on a busy street means the killing was probably a professional contract hit, Vladimir Markin, an investigative-committee spokesman, on Tuesday said the killer could have been a "lone criminal" opposed to Markelov's position, Interfax reported...
...Markelov was the head of the Rule of Law Institute, a human-rights group, and had made many enemies over his career - from Chechen warlords and the Russian military to neo-fascists and nationalist organizations. He had worked closely with Novaya Gazeta investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya before she was murdered in 2006 and had recently begun to look into the circumstances behind the November attack on journalist Mikhail Beketov, a beating that left Beketov in a coma for two weeks and resulted in the amputation of a leg and some fingers...
...what really put Markelov in the spotlight was his representation of the family of Elza Kungayeva - the 18-year-old Chechen woman whom Budanov had strangled in his quarters in March 2000 just as Russia's second war in Chechnya was beginning. The Budanov case became a symbol for the thousands of human-rights abuses committed by both sides in Chechnya. Budanov served part of a 10-year sentence but was paroled for good behavior and released last Thursday. At the news conference just before his death, Markelov said he might file an appeal against Budanov's early release...