Vagif Kochetkov

Moscow, September 30, 2010--Top Russian investigators have pledged to pursue 19 cases of murdered journalists presented to them by a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists, reopening several closed cases and pursuing new leads in a number of other probes.

Secrecy, indifference, conflicts mar investigations into journalist deaths. Moscow has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. Its international partners have an obligation, too.

Investigators in two cases are quick to classify slayings as the product of street crimes such as robberies rather than probe more sensitive motives.

Excerpts from the work of journalists slain in Russia since 2000

Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, provided testimony to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the pressing issue of impunity in journalist murders in Russia. The commission held a hearing this week on Russia's human rights record. A transcript of the testimony follows:

New York, April 8, 2008—A Russian district court judge on Monday acquitted a man accused in the killing of Vagif Kochetkov, Tula correspondent for the Moscow daily Trud and a columnist for the local newspaper Molodoi Kommunar, according to news reports and CPJ interviews.

Prosecutors had charged Yan Stakhanov, a local businessman, with robbery and assault and had sought a 14-year imprisonment. Judge Andrei Shmakov ruled that prosecutors did not present sufficient evidence and ordered Stakhanov’s release, the state broadcaster GTRK Tula reported.

New York, April 8, 2008—A Russian district court judge on Monday acquitted a man accused in the killing of Vagif Kochetkov, Tula correspondent for the Moscow daily Trud and a columnist for the local newspaper Molodoi Kommunar, according to news reports and CPJ interviews.

As Russia assumed a world leadership role, chairing the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and the Council of Europe’s powerful committee of ministers, the Kremlin cracked down on dissent and shrugged off astounding attacks on critics and journalists. In a grim year for the press, parliament passed a measure to hush media criticism by calling it “extremism,” and an assassin silenced Anna Politkovskaya, the internationally known reporter who exposed government abuses in Chechnya.