2 held in deaths of Russian lawyer, reporter

Suspects in bold killings identified as members of neo-Nazi group

MOSCOW -- Russian authorities said Thursday that they had solved one of their country's most notorious crimes, charging two alleged neo-Nazi gang members in the brazen killings of a human rights lawyer and a journalist in central Moscow in January.

The arrests, announced by a top law enforcement official in a televised meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, came amid mounting criticism of the government's failure to find and punish culprits in a string of contract-style killings of reporters and human rights activists.

Stanislav Markelov, 34, a prominent lawyer who often clashed with the government's security services, and Anastasia Baburova, 25, a student journalist, were fatally shot on a sidewalk not far from the Kremlin after leaving an afternoon news conference.

On Thursday, investigators identified Nikita Tikhonov, 29, wanted in connection with the 2006 fatal stabbing of a young anti-fascism campaigner in Moscow, as one of the suspects in the January killings. Markelov had represented the victim's family in court and repeatedly pressed the authorities to find Tikhonov.

Police also charged Yevgenia Khasis, 24, who is alleged to have followed Markelov and Baburova and informed Tikhonov of their movements. Authorities said Tikhonov shot the two with a silencer-fitted handgun. Khasis, a sales manager at an accounting software firm, was described as a member of the same neo-Nazi group that Tikhonov was said to be part of.

Friends and colleagues of the slain lawyer and reporter expressed relief at the arrests but urged caution. Some noted that the double shooting looked nothing like a typical Russian ultranationalist attack, which generally involves knives and large groups of assailants.

"I would be careful about saying that this crime has been solved," said Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper where Baburova worked and that Markelov counted among his clients. "Our law enforcement bodies often hurry to accuse this person or that person, but in practice, they're often wrong."

In February, a jury acquitted three men charged with killing another Novaya Gazeta journalist, investigative reporter and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, after the defense argued that they had been framed by police eager to close a politically sensitive case.

Even if the evidence against Tikhonov and Khasis is strong, Sokolov said, the killings were most likely commissioned and organized by others, possibly in law enforcement.

In addition to defending members of Russia's anti-fascist movement -- youths who engage in street skirmishes with ultranationalist gangs -- Markelov also made enemies by representing environmentalists, labor organizers and journalists, including Politkovskaya. He was best known for his work on behalf of victims of torture and other crimes committed by security forces in Chechnya.

His killing, alongside that of Baburova, who may have been shot trying to stop the gunman, prompted international outrage. Medvedev invited Novaya Gazeta's editor to the Kremlin to express his condolences, part of an effort to present himself as more liberal than predecessor Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister.

Alexander Bortnikov, head of the powerful Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, personally briefed Medvedev on the case Thursday, telling him that one of the suspects had confessed. He also said officers had tied the purported neo-Nazi gang to an ethnic hate killing in September, seized a large cache of firearms and disrupted plans for another "resonating murder."

Bortnikov described the gang only as a "radical nationalist group," but authorities previously identified Tikhonov as a member of United Brigade 88, one of several extreme right-wing groups in Russia, where racist and anti-immigrant violence has surged in recent years. As many as 80,000 neo-Nazis are active in the country, experts say.

In 2006, Tikhonov was among a group of men charged with stabbing Alexander Riukhin, 19, to death while he was on his way to an anti-fascist punk concert. Three men were convicted on lesser charges, but Tikhonov and two others were never arrested.

Markelov complained then that police did not take the case seriously because they were biased against anti-fascists and tended to sympathize with ultranationalist gangs and use them as enforcers in corruption schemes.