Russians protest over journalist's death while in police custody

More than 1,000 people gathered in Russia's troubled Ingushetia region yesterday to protest the death of Magomed Yevloyev, a leading journalist and opposition leader shot while in police custody.

Mr Yevloyev, owner of opposition internet site www.ingushetiya.ru, is the most high-profile Russian journalist to be killed since investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya was shot outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

Police said he was shot by accident when he tried to grab an officer's gun but his supporters and human rights groups said they did not believe that version of events.

Mr Yevloyev had often clashed with Ingushetia's Kremlin-backed leader Murat Zyazikov and his internet site was the target of official attempts to close it down.

A Reuters reporter in Ingushetia's biggest city Nazran said protesters gathered in a central square around a truck which was carrying Mr Yevloyev's coffin.

"They killed our colleague in a dastardly and open way. If the federal authorities do not intervene in what is happening, we have the right to demand Ingushetia's secession from Russia," Magomed Khazbiyev, a protest organiser, told the crowd.

The protesters responded with loud shouts of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great." About half of them left when Yevloyev's body was taken for burial. Some 500 people remained and said they would not leave until Zyazikov left his post.

The local administration, contacted yesterday, declined to comment on Mr Yevloyev's killing, which is likely to add to tension in a region which is already a tinderbox because of poverty, a violent Islamist insurgency and accusations that Mr Zyazikov crushes dissent.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media freedom, group, said the explanations given by the Ingush authorities for Mr Yevloyev's death made no sense.

"We are outraged by the death of Yevloyev, who demonstrated his courage and determination by reporting independent news in Ingushetia, although he and his family were harassed and threatened," it said. "His death must not go unpunished."

Russian prosecutors said they had started a criminal investigation under article 109 of the Russian criminal code: causing death through carelessness.

Interior Ministry offcials were taking Mr Yevloyev from Magas airport to Nazran in an official vehicle when the incident occurred.

"Yevloyev attempted to grab the weapon of one of the officers accompanying him. As a result the unidentified officer inflicted a penetrating gunshot wound to Yevloyev's head," a ministry spokeswoman said."

Mr Yevloyev was one of the most vocal opponents of Kremlin-backed Zyazikov, a former officer with the KGB Soviet secret police.

Russian media reported that the editor of ingushetiya.ru, Rosa Malsagova, fled Russia this year saying she feared for her life. A Moscow court in May closed down the site, saying it was publishing extremist material.

Mr Yevloyev spearheaded a campaign to discredit a claim by Ingushetia's authorities that 99 per cent of voters turned out to vote - most of them for a pro-Kremlin party - in a nationwide parliamentary election last year.

The campaign said it collected over 90,000 signatures from people who denied having cast their ballot.