Two charged over murders of Russian lawyer and reporter

Two Russian nationalists have been arrested and charged in the high-profile killings of a human rights lawyer and journalist who were gunned down in Moscow in January, officials said yesterday.

The double murder of Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had exposed abuses by the Russian army in Chechnya, and Anastasia Baburova, a reporter at opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, were condemned by the EU.

The arrests this week were cautiously welcomed by human rights groups, who complain that many killings of Russian journalists and activists go unsolved.

Russia's investigative committee said a man and a woman, Nikita Tikhonov, born in 1980, and Yevgenia Khasis, born in 1985, had been charged with the killings. Both were said to be Moscow residents.

FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov said the two had been caught as part of an investigation into an extreme nationalist group, which was amassing weapons and had been implicated in a racist murder.

"In the course of additional investigations, another murder was solved, which was committed in September on motives of ethnic hatred, and in which this criminal group was involved," Mr Bortnikov added.

Ms Khasis was a manager at a company called Bukh Uchyot Torgovlya (Accounting Trade), while Nikita Tikhonov was unemployed, a Moscow court spokesman said.

The pair has been charged with murder by an organised group, a crime that carries a maximum punishment of life in prison.

The Interfax news agency and Kommersant newspaper, citing law-enforcement sources, reported that the suspects were former members of a banned far-right group called Russian National Unity. But the former leader of the group, Alexander Barkashov, told Interfax that the suspects were never members.

Kommersant reported that investigators believe the young woman tailed the victims and informed the killer on their whereabouts.

The masked gunman managed to flee after the shootings, carried out in broad daylight on a busy street.

The killings came just after Mr Markelov gave a press conference on the case of Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen girl whose 2000 strangling by Russian army colonel Yury Budanov became a cause cèlèbre of Russian rights activist.

In the case that highlighted abuses by the Russian army in Chechnya, Mr Markelov had vowed to challenge a controversial court decision to grant early release to Budanov, who is viewed as a hero by some nationalist groups.

The lawyer had also represented outspoken journalist Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in 2006.

The other victim, Ms Baburova, was a campaigning journalist who wrote about Russia's growing problem of racism and ultra-nationalism. Witnesses said she tried to detain the killer after he shot Mr Markelov.