Chechenians Demand Justice For Murdered Lawyer

Stanislav Markelov was shot dead less than a kilometre from the Kremlin after a news briefing on Monday.

Thousands of protesters in Chechnya on Tuesday demanded Russian authorities find the killers of a human rights lawyer and a reporter who were shot dead in central Moscow.

Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who fought against the early release of a former Russian tank commander imprisoned for the murder of a Chechen girl, was killed less than a kilometre from the Kremlin after a news briefing on Monday.

A reporter for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, who had walked down the road with Markelov, was also shot in the head and died.

About 3,000 people came out onto the main square in Grozny, the regional capital of Chechnya. Some held banners saying "Why does the law not operate in Russia?"

Violent anti-government protests are rare in Russia and the organisers said that police had detained around 30 protesters.

"Life costs nothing in our state. But we should not just accept it -- we should fight for our rights," said demonstrator Malika Israilova.

Markelov, 34, represented the family of 18-year-old Elza Kungayeva, whose murder in 2000 became a symbol of human rights abuses in war-ravaged Chechnya. Her family said she had been raped and murdered in a drunken rampage by Russian troops.

He also represented anti-fascist activists, and, in Moscow, about 300 protesters shouting anti-establishment slogans stormed a metro station and smashed lights after marching along a street and throwing bins at a McDonald's restaraunt.

"Fascists kill and the authorities cover them up," read one of their banners.

The Czech presidency of the European Union called on Russia to carry out a full investigation.

Kungayeva's murder provoked a storm of protest in Chechnya. The early release last week of Yuri Budanov, a Russian colonel who was jailed for the killing, triggered a wave of indignation in the mostly Muslim region.

Markelov had led attempts to block the early release of Budanov, the highest-ranking Russian officer to be imprisoned for war crimes in Chechnya.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Tuesday he had awarded Markelov a posthumous medal for services to the region.

Shootings are not rare in Russia. Reporters who delve into the dangerous world of Chechen politics are often targets.

Prosecutors said they had opened a murder investigation, but such killings are rarely solved in Russia.

Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, was shot dead in 2006 outside her flat in Moscow. The person who ordered her killing has not yet been detained.