05 January 2009
Shafig Amrakhov
Shooting
Shafig Amrakhov, editor of the online regional news agency RIA 51, died in a Murmansk hospital on 5 January, having slipped into a coma after at least one unidentified assailant shot him in the head several times.
The type of gun used is known in Russia as a "traumatic pistol." It uses rubber bullets and is considered a non-lethal, self-defence weapon, local press reported.
Amrakhov was attacked on the evening of 30 December by at least one unknown man waiting for him by the elevator in his Murmansk apartment building. Amrakhov was conscious immediately after the attack, according to local news reports, and told details to his relatives--he had called his family using the building's intercom minutes before, asking them to buzz him in, the reports said.
The assailant shot the journalist in the head and ran out. An ambulance took him to the Murmansk Regional Hospital, where he underwent a six-hour-long emergency surgery. He died six days later, having never regained consciousness, local television channel TV-21 reported.
According to the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation, this was not the first attack against Amrakhov. In 1997, an unknown assailant attacked the journalist in the entrance of his apartment building and hit him on the head with a blunt object.
