Attacked Russian journalist Kashin regains consciousness
Kashin, who works for the respected Kommersant daily, was severely beaten by unidentified assailants near his house in Moscow early on Saturday. He suffered severe head and leg injuries and was put into an induced coma.
Anatoly Adamchuk, a journalist from a regional paper Zhukovkiye Vesti, who was writing about the protection of forests near Moscow, was attacked two days after the attack on Kashin, the Ekho Moskvy radio station said.
The regional paper said it will launch its own investigations into the attack on its correspondent as local police say the attack was staged by Adamchuk himself to attract attention.
During a meeting with the staff of Rossiiskaya Gazeta, President Dmitry Medvedev said that the criminals who attacked Kashin would be found and punished.
Russian Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin ordered a new probe into a 2008 attack on a Russian journalist, Mikhail Beketov, a committee spokesman said on Thursday.
In November 2008, Beketov, the editor-in-chief of the controversial Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, was severely beaten by unidentified attackers. He is now severely brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair.
The case was frozen in mid-September because investigators were unable to identify and charge any suspects.
In late September, Bastrykin ordered a review of all cases concerning attacks on journalists.
All criminal cases launched before the Investigative Committee was established in Russia in September 2007, as well as those suspended or closed, will also be reviewed.
Bastrykin said that police had identified, but not yet detained, the suspected murderer of rights activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova, who was abducted in the Chechen capital Grozny and killed on July 15, 2009, Kazinform cites RIA Novosti. See www.en.rian.ru for full version.