Politics and Law

The owner of an opposition Internet news site in Russia's volatile Ingushetia region was shot and killed Sunday after being detained by police.

Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the www.Ingushetiya.ru Web site, died Sunday after being detained by police.

(Credit: Ingushetiya.ru)

Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the www.Ingushetiya.ru Web site, was arrested at Nazran airport in southern Russia after disembarking a flight, according to a statement by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Yevloyev was later found dumped on the side of the road, suffering from a gunshot wound to the head, the news site's deputy editor, Ruslan Khautiyev, told the Associated Press. Yevloyev later died at a hospital, Khautiyev said.

Yevloyev had angered the region's Kremlin-backed administration with bold criticism of police treatment of civilians in the region, the AP reported. A court in June accused him of spreading "extremist" statements and ordered him to close his site, but it reappeared under a different name.

The Russian prosecutor general's office said it would open an investigation into the "incident."

"While police officers were attempting to transfer M. Yevloyev to an Interior Ministry office, an incident occurred," said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigative committee of the prosecutor general's office, according to the Interfax news agency. "M. Yevloyev received a gunshot wound to the temple area."

A lawyer for Yevloyev ridiculed the explanation and said police dumped Yevloyev on a road after shooting him.

"It was in no way a mistake," the lawyer, Kaloi Akhilgov, told Reuters.

Reporters Without Borders said it was "outraged" by Yevloyev's death.

"His death must not go unpunished," the media group said in a statement. "It is vital that the international community, especially the European Union, should demand to know what really happened and who was responsible."

Yevloyev is the latest high-profile journalist to be killed in Russia in recent years. Anna Politkovskaya, who covered the war in Chechnya, was shot to death in the entryway to her Moscow apartment in 2006.