Timoshenko: CPJ lacks information about deaths of three Russian journalists

In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a special report on murders of journalists in the world. The list lacks the names of three lost Dagestani journalists. According to the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF), their murders had to do with their professional activities.

"As to the special report, it looks strange that Russia is missing in the CPJ list. Out of 12 journalist's deaths fixed in 2010 by the GDF, at least three cases look very much like murders because of their professional activities," Boris Timoshenko, head of the GDF's Monitoring Service, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"These are the murders in Dagestan of Sultan Sultanmagomedov, Shamil Aliev and Said Ibragimov. The remaining nine murders in Russia are not so obvious," Mr Timoshenko said.

The special report of the CPJ on murders of journalists in 2010 was published in New York on December 15.

The document stresses that "the Committee to Protect Journalists is conducting a worldwide campaign to combat impunity, while paying particular attention to the Philippines and Russia, two countries with a large number of unsolved journalist's murders."

Further, the authors of the report write that "this year there were no reports about killings of journalists in Russia in relation to their professional activities."

On the other hand, John Crowfoot, an expert of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that his organization had already published, jointly with the GDF and the Centre of Extreme Journalism (CEJ), its database on the journalists who perished in Russia.

In the near future, the second database will be released, containing not only cases of attacks and killings of journalists, but also incidents with threats to journalists.

Currently, the united database of the IFJ, GDF and CEJ is posted on the Internet.