MOSCOW,
Russia -- A television journalist was found dead
in a Moscow apartment Friday with a belt around his neck and numerous stab
wounds -- a grisly murder that reinforces Russia's image as one of the most
dangerous countries for reporters.
Hours after the body of Ilyas
Shurpayev was discovered, an executive in charge of the provincial state TV
station in his home region of Dagestan was shot to death by unidentified men,
and police were looking for links between the two killings.
More than a dozen journalists
have been killed since 2000. Many appear to have been targeted because of their
attempts to dig into allegations of corruption.
Charges
have rarely been filed, including in the 2006 slaying in Moscow of Anna
Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who won acclaim for her reporting of
atrocities against civilians in war-scarred Chechnya.
Shurpayev
worked for Channel One, a station controlled by the Kremlin.
The
Russian Interior Ministry branch in Dagestan said Shurpayev's slaying could be
linked to the killing later in the day of Gadzhi Abashilov, chief of the
state-controlled regional TV company based in Makhachkala, Dagestan. The office
wouldn't comment on possible motives.
Hate
attacks against ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and former Soviet Central
Asia also are common in Moscow.
Channel
One said the 32-year-old reporter moved to Moscow last month from Dagestan, a
part of the North Caucasus region that sees frequent violence, some linked to
Islamic militants and some rooted in clan feuds and crime.
State-run
Vesti-24 television cited a concierge in Shurpayev's building as saying the
journalist had called down from his apartment early Friday to ask her to let in
two young men. The men apparently looked like natives of the North Caucasus,
the report said.
Firefighters
later found Shurpayev's body in his rented studio apartment after a fire
apparently was set after the slaying, Channel One spokeswoman Larisa Krymova
said.
The
Investigative Committee, the branch of the prosecutor's office that announced
the murder investigation, said nothing about a possible motive for Shurpayev's
killing. Krymova also declined comment on that aspect of the case.
"We
are shocked and saddened by Shurpayev's murder," Reporters Without
Borders, a Paris-based media freedom watchdog, said in a statement released
before Abashilov's killing was announced.
"We
urge the authorities to carry out a thorough investigation and to consider all
hypotheses, including the possibility that it was linked to his work as a
journalist, which is such a risky profession in Russia," the reporters
group said.
Critics
say Russia has witnessed a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political
freedoms during President Vladimir Putin's eight-year presidency.
Top
independent television stations have been shut down and print media have also
experienced growing official pressure.
