A year ago Farid Babaev was assassinated in Dagestan

Saturday, November 21, 2008, is exactly one year after the murder of Farid Babaev, leader of the Dagestan Regional Branch of the "Yabloko" Party, a prominent public figure and human rights activist.

Farid Babaev was executed in Makhachkala at the doorstep of his own house on November 21, 2007. With heavy gunshot wounds he was hospitalized in the resuscitation ward of the Republic's Clinical Hospital, where he died three days later, on November 24, 2007, without regaining consciousness.

Farid Babaev's murder had a broad resonance not only in Dagestan, but across Russia. From the very start of the investigation, Farid Babaev's relatives saw political motives in this crime.

The Human Rights Centre "Memorial" expressed confidence, in the necrology in Babaev's memory, that the criminal whom Farid Babaev exposed were behind his murder, namely, the officials guilty of executing peaceful demonstrators, kidnappings, murders and corruption.

In his pre-election interview that he gave to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent shortly before his death, Farid Babaev also criticized the policy of the federal centre in Northern Caucasus, having characterized it as negative and having treated the absence of stability in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan as the result of targeted "warming up" of this restless region.

Farid Babaev's murder case is considered by the Supreme Court of Dagestan. Although the materials of the case were sent to the court back in June 2008, the judicial hearing on Babaev's murder started only on October 22. For several months the court could not form the jury: because of the strong political resonance, caused by Farid Babaev's murder, people refused to participate in the trial as jurymen.