In Moscow, Laments for a Slain Lawmaker

Politicians, human rights activists and ordinary citizens paid their respects Sunday to a lawmaker shot to death last week in front of his house in Moscow.

Sergei Yushenkov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, was shot Thursday, hours after he announced that his fledgling political party would take part in December elections.

Hundreds of mourners walked through metal detectors into the dimly lighted hall of the Moscow Palace of Youth, a structure built during the Soviet era that is now used primarily as a dance club. They filed past the open casket, piling roses and carnations on tables in front of it.

Yushenkov was buried later at Vagankovo cemetery.

Colleagues from the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, remembered Yushenkov as honest and idealistic, and they lamented the impunity with which killers have operated in Russia.

Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov told reporters in the Russian Far East that some progress had been made in the investigation. He said witnesses had been questioned and clues gleaned from the pistol used in the shooting; it was left at the scene.

The Interfax news agency quoted sources as saying that investigators were concentrating on possible financial disagreements within Liberal Russia as a motive.

Yushenkov’s allies have said that he was not involved in business and that he did not control his party’s finances. They say the killing must have been political.

Some observers have speculated that the killing was connected to Yushenkov’s role in an unofficial investigation into a series of apartment bombings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people and helped spark the latest war in Chechnya.