The International Press Institute (IPI) condemns the murder on Tuesday of Dagestan-based newspaper editor Malik Akhmedilov, who was found dead in his car near the republic’s capital Makhachkala with bullet wounds to the stomach.
Akhmedilov’s killing starkly underscores Russia’s worrying reputation as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters. According to IPI’s Death Watch count for journalists, at least 53 reporters have been killed in Russia since 1997.
“We are outraged at the murder of yet another journalist in Russia, and yet another journalist in Dagestan,” said IPI Deputy Director Michael Kudlak. “The Russian authorities must back up their pledges to protect journalists and prosecute those who murder them. The perpetrators behind this latest vicious killing must be found and punished. A culture of impunity must not be allowed to thrive.”
Although the details surrounding the killing are still unclear, colleagues believe Akhmedilov’s murder was linked to his work as a critical journalist, Irina Kozerova, of regional human rights organisation ‘Caucasian Knot,’ told IPI.
As deputy-editor of the Avar-language weekly Hakikat, Akhmedilov was known for his critical reporting on local and federal authority attempts to suppress political and religious “extremism,” as well as his “investigative articles about the unsolved assassinations of high-ranking officials in the volatile Russian republic,” according to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.
On the day of his murder, Akhmedilov had taken his car to a local shop to buy an item for his wife, Kozerova quoted Hakikat journalist Zulfiya Gadzhiyeva as saying. Local builders near the murder scene heard gunshots and alerted police, who arrived and found Akhmedilov’s dead body in his car. The journalist’s neighbours reported seeing a suspicious vehicle without number plates driving in the area prior to the shooting.
Akhmedilov is at least the fourth Dagestani journalist to be murdered in Russia within the last two years.
On 21 March 2008, Gadzhi Abashilov of the State Television & Radio Broadcasting Company was killed when his car was sprayed with bullets from a passing vehicle in Makhachkala, while on the same day the body of Ilyas Shurpayev, a Dagestani journalist working for Channel One television, was found dead in his apartment in Moscow. He had been stabbed and strangled. And on 2 September 2008, two unidentified assailants attacked Abdulla Telman Alishayev, another prominent journalist in Dagestan. He sustained gunshot wounds to his shoulder and head, and died on 3 September.
