Russia
Russia rules out murder in journalist's deathPosted Jul 20 2007
The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office has reportedly ruled that a journalist Ivan Safronov who fell from a window of his Moscow apartment building was not murdered. Safronov had been investigating arms deals shortly before he was found dead in front of his home in March. “No crime was uncovered in this case. In the course of the investigation the 'criminal version' was fully investigated. No evidence of that was discovered,” an unidentified official from the Prosecutor-General's Office told Interfax. He added, however, that the investigation was not yet finished. Ilya Bulavinov, the deputy editor of the “Kommersant” daily that employed Safronov, told the Reuters news agency that the official investigation was not thorough enough. Russia ranks as one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists.