Two Sentenced For Second Time For Daghestani Journalist's Murder
Source: RFE/RL
A Makhachkala district court has sentenced two men for the killing in August 2009 of Avar journalist Abdulmalik Akhmedilov. The two accused, Murad Shuaibov and Isa Abdurakhmanov, were jailed for 10 1/2 and eight years respectively.
They had been found guilty and sentenced to those same terms in late March 2015. Four months later, however, Daghestan's Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict, citing procedural violations, and ordered a retrial, which began in early September.
Akhmedilov, who was 32 when he died, was editor of the local Avar-language newspaper Sogratl (named for the eponymous village where he was born) and deputy chief editor of the republican Avar-language paper Hakikat (Truth). At the time of his death, the Committee to Protect Journalists quoted one of Akhmedilov's colleagues as saying he had acquired a reputation for critical reporting on how the federal security forces sought to suppress political and religious dissent under the guise of cracking down on "extremism."
...
Moscow-based journalist Orkhan Dzhemal had previously undertaken his own investigation of the slayings of both Akhmedilov and Khadzhimurad Kamalov, founder and chief editor of the independent Daghestani Russian-language weekly Chernovik and the son of Ali Kamalov's first cousin. In three articles published in April 2013, June 2013, and May 2014, Dzhemal summarized the circumstantial evidence implicating Isayev, who has since been appointed a deputy prime minister, in both murders.
Read more: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-daghestan-journalist-akhmedilov-killers-jailed-again/27766298.html
