1,500 protest slaying of Russian lawyer

About 1,500 people rallied Tuesday in this Chechen capital to protest the slaying of a lawyer who opposed the early release of a Russian army officer convicted of strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman.

Stanislav Markelov, 34, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer, had worked with the investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya. She was gunned down in Moscow in 2006.

Markelov was shot Monday on a busy street near the Kremlin, shortly after speaking to journalists about the case of Col. Yuri Budanov, who admitted killing Kheda Kungayeva in 2000. Journalist Anastasia Baburova, 25, was fatally shot when she tried to intervene after Monday’s shooting.

Budanov, a former tank regiment commander in the fight against insurgents in the Chechen republic, said he believed that the teenager was a rebel sniper. He was freed last week with more than a year left in his 10-year sentence.

Minkail Ezhiyev -- like Markelov, a lawyer for Kungayeva’s family -- told demonstrators that Markelov had received threatening calls and text messages from people identifying themselves as supporters of Budanov.

Investigators said Markelov’s work probably was the motive.

“The investigation presumes the murder was carried out either by a professional killer or by a lone criminal who disagreed with Markelov’s views,” Federal Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.

Just before he was killed, Markelov told reporters that he was considering challenging Budanov’s release in an international court.