A Russian journalist was found strangled to death in his Moscow apartment Friday, the latest in a series of murders of journalists in a country where independent reporting is under constant assault.
Police said the body of Ilyas Shurpayev, 32, was found by firefighters who had been called to put out a fire in his apartment. They said it appeared that he had been strangled with a belt and his apartment set ablaze.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general's office said Shurpayev apparently knew his attackers, whom he had let inside his apartment.
Shurpayev was a reporter for state-run television's Channel One. He reported from many conflict zones, including Chechnya and Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Reporter's Blog Leaves Clue
Hours before his death, Shurpayev wrote in his blog that the owners of a newspaper in Dagestan had banned a column he wrote and instructed its staffers not to mention his name in publications.
"Now I am a dissident!" was the title of the last entry in the Web journal under his name.
More than a dozen journalists have been slain in contract-style killings in Russia since 2000. Many journalists appear to have been targeted because of their attempts to report on allegations of corruption.
Russian officials have opened a murder investigation into Shurpayev's death.
From NPR and wire reports
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