Mikhail Beketov

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Mikhail Beketov

Mikhail Beketov, 55, the former editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, died in a Moscow hospital on April 8, 2013, from heart failure stemming from a choking episode during lunch, Elena Kostyuchenko, Beketov’s friend and a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told CPJ by phone. The choking incident was directly related to…

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Mission Journal: Visiting Mikhail Beketov

In Moscow, progress is often followed by heartbreak. So it was on the day after our meeting with Russia’s top investigator, when we hit the wall of Russia’s dysfunctional criminal justice system.

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Beketov’s untimely death, and Putin’s unfulfilled promise

Mikhail Beketov’s recovery, in photos by CPJ and news agencies. Mikhail Beketov, the former crusading editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda in the Moscow suburb, Khimki, died this afternoon at a Moscow hospital. A choking episode during lunch led to heart failure, Elena Kostyuchenko, Beketov’s friend and a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta,…

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CPJ
A fighter regains his footing, but his voice is stilled. (CPJ/Nina Ognianova)

Beketov back on his feet, and a long road awaits

Mikhail Beketov can walk now–using an artificial leg and propping himself on crutches. He’s moving around his house in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. It was here, in his front yard, where the newspaper editor was attacked two years and seven months ago. It was in this yard where assailants left him for dead. The…

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Beketov, with CPJ's Kati Marton, suffered injuries so severe he lost a limb and the ability to speak. (CPJ/Nina Ognianova)

Russian court overturns Beketov defamation conviction

New York, December 10, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists is relieved that the Khimki City Court has overturned the defamation conviction of editor Mikhail Beketov, a verdict that had been condemned in Russia and abroad. 

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Russia reopens investigation into Beketov attack

New York, November 11, 2010–Russia’s top investigator, Aleksandr Bastrykin, today ordered the reopening of a probe into a near-lethal November 2008 attack on Mikhail Beketov, editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda. Bastrykin’s order comes a day after a court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki convicted Beketov of criminally slandering local mayor Vladimir Strelchenko.…

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Beketov convicted of defamation, his assailants still at large

New York, November 10, 2010–A court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki today convicted Mikhail Beketov, the editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, of criminally slandering Khimki’s mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko, in a 2007 television interview. Beketov, who is in a wheelchair and unable to speak two years after a near-lethal attack, was wheeled into the courtroom for…

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Mikhail Beketov before he was brutally beaten and left for dead in 2008. (Eco Oborona)

Beketov still recovering from attack a year later in Russia

Those familiar with Mikhail Beketov’s ordeal describe his survival as nothing short of a miracle. The once fit, towering 51-year-old who campaigned on environmental issues and criticized his city government’s policies through the pages of his newspaper is now gone. But the former editor of Khimkinskaya Pravda, an independent publication that exposed the blunders of the Khimki…

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Russia must effectively investigate Beketov case

We issued this statement on the first anniversary of the brutal attack on Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimki-based independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda, who was beaten nearly to death and left in his backyard. Beketov had criticized the Khimki administration’s decision to cut down a vast area of the region’s forest in order to build…

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Mayor Strelchenko, drop your cruel complaint

Dear Mayor Strelchenko: While leading a delegation to Moscow from the Committee to Protect Journalists in late September, I had the opportunity to meet with Mikhail Beketov in the Moscow hospital where he was being treated. Today, I was outraged to learn Beketov is now a convicted criminal because you have pursued a cruel complaint.

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