Press freedom in Russia received a major boost after a Moscow court sentenced an extreme nationalist to life in prison for killing a trainee journalist and a well-known lawyer, news reports said.

According to The Guardian, Russian neo-Nazi Nikita Tikhonov was sentenced for shooting Anastasiya Baburova, 25, a trainee journalist at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the 34-year old lawyer Stanislav Markelov in January 2009 on a side street in central Moscow.  Yevgeniya Khasis, Tikhonov’s girlfriend, was also tried and sentenced to 18 years in a penal colony for aiding the attack, the newspaper reported.

Tikhonov shot Markelov at close range and then fired at Baburova when she attempted to hold his arm. A jury at Moscow’s city court found the couple guilty last month, after jury members were informed that Markelov was targeted due to his work on prosecuting neo-Nazis. Investigators said that Baburova was killed because she was witness to Markelov’s murder, Ria Novosti reported.

The Guardian said that the judgment and the trial, which lasted for three and a half months, was a contrast to disputed trials that followed murders of prominent journalists such as Paul Klebnikov in 2004 and Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. “The court process was honest, fair and carried out with dignity,” Baburova’s mother, Larisa, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Unfortunately, the problems facing the media in Russia were again highlighted when a journalist working for the Russian Islamic newspaper, As-Salam, was reportedly killed in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday.

“On Sunday evening we were informed that an employee of the As-Salam newspaper, Yakhya Magomedov, was killed,” a spokesman for the local investigation department told Ria Novosti. “Investigators are currently working at the scene to try and establish all circumstances surrounding his death.”

“IPI is delighted with the judgment in the Markelov, Baburova murder case and hope that this serves as a precedent for other similar trials in the short term and as a deterrent for crimes against journalists in the long run.” IPI Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said. “However, the murder of Mr. Magomedov is a grim reminder that the media in Russia is not safe and we demand a thorough investigation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.”