In January 2009 at least 39 people suffered racist and neo-Nazi attacks. 14 of them died. The statistics are lower than for January 2008 when at least 59 people fell victim, with 15 of them killed

The death has been announced in Moscow of human rights defender Yefrem Yankelevich who was for many years authorized representative and close associate of Andrei Sakharov

The Supreme Court in Ingushetia has confirmed that Ingush opposition figure and owner of the opposition website Ingushetia.ru , Magomed Yevloev, who was killed while in a police car last year, had been detained unlawfully

Based on the Soviet Criminal Code of 1926 only a counterrevolutionary crime is not subject to a time limit. Since the Katyń Massacre cannot be called counterrevolutionary, the Court considers the time for seeking justice to have expired

Memorial welcomes this pleasant surprise, but labours no illusions after the failure to heed public opinion in December with the effective abolition of trial by jury in cases of crucial public significance

On Monday 26 January, the funeral was held in her native Sevastopol (Crimea) of 25-year-old Anastasia (Nastya) Baburova, freelance journalist for Russia’s “Novaya gazeta” who was murdered last week by a hired killer, together with prominent lawyer and human rights defender Stanislav Markelov

The judge, in backing the arguments of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, stated that if bodies lie in a common grave with skulls with gunshots, one cannot assert that they were executed, but merely that guns were used

The man detained on suspicion of killing Chechen political refugee Umar Israilov in Vienna has claimed that Chechen President Kadyrov has a hit list of several hundred people

The European Court of Human Rights has already handed down more than 70 judgments in which it condemned Russia for grave human rights abuse committed by Russian servicemen in Chechnya

The calls for a full enquiry into the killing of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova are pouring in and yet nobody seriously believes that those guilty will be brought to justice. The international community can and must exert pressure, or hold their words, their messages of outrage, they have the acrid taste of betrayal

The following two addresses given by lawyer and human rights defender Stanislav Markelov include the words spoken at the press conference just before he was gunned down

The series of killings of lawyers, journalists and civic activists over recent times in the capital and regions of Russia arouse the deepest concern (the appeal is open for endorsement)

According to various reports there were around 3 thousand people present, and many other meetings took place in other Russian cities

On 20 January a court in St Petersburg allowed the claim brought by Memorial and ordered that all documents and items removed be returned. These include absolutely irreplaceable and vital information gathered over 20 years about the Soviet Terror

Anastasia Baburova, shot on Monday by the killer of Stanislav Markelov, has died. She never regained consciousness. She was 25 years old.

Stanislav Markelov, lawyer and human rights defender, was shot dead in the middle of Moscow on Monday. He had been representing the family of Elsa Kungaeva, the young Chechen woman murdered by Colonel Yury Budanov

Igor Sutyagin is serving a 15-year-sentence, convicted of divulging State secrets for passing on material created on the basis of sources available on open access

The Austrian government should act swiftly to bring to justice those responsible for the killing of a Chechen man who had alleged he had been tortured by Ramzan Kadyrov, now the Chechen president, HRW, AI, and the Memorial Human Rights Centre stress in a joint statement

In both cases the European Court of Human Rights found violations of Article 2 (right to life and lack of effective investigation) and others

All the applicants in these cases alleged that, during security operations carried out in Chechnya in 2002, their relatives had been detained by Russian servicemen and had subsequently disappeared or had been killed