Iskandar Khatloni was a journalist from Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

 who worked for Radio Free Europe

Radio Free Europe

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...

 and was murdered

Homicide

Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...

 in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 while covering the Second Chechen War

Second Chechen War

The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....

.

Life

In the 1980s at the onset of glasnost

Glasnost

Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...

 in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 Khatloni began worked as a BBC correspondent

BBC World Service

The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...

. In 1996 he became a correspondent for the Tajik language

Tajik language

Tajik, Tajik Persian, or Tajiki, is a variety of modern Persian spoken in Central Asia. Historically Tajiks called their language zabani farsī , meaning Persian language in English; the term zabani tajikī, or Tajik language, was introduced in the 20th century by the Soviets...

 division of the Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

-based Radio Free Europe. In addition to his journalistic work, Khatloni was a distinguished poet

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 and had published four volumes of verse.

Before his death Khatloni had been assigned to Moscow to report on human rights abuses in Chechnya

International response to the Second Chechen War

-Western countries:There had been strong international condemnation of Russia's threat to civilians to get out of the Chechen capital, Grozny, or be considered an enemy target and destroyed. The United States and the European Union have denounced the move...

.

Murder

On the evening of 22 September 2000 Khatloni was attacked inside of his Moscow apartment by an unknown, axe-wielding assailant. Khatloni was struck twice in the head and then stumbled onto the street and collapsed. He was later found by a passerby and taken to Moscow's Botkin Hospital, where he died that night of a serious head wound.

Speculation surrounding Khatloni’s murder has focused on his coverage of the war in Chechnya, a politically sensitive topic that brought great peril to Russian based journalists coving the subject. Just the previous spring, Igor Domnikov of Novaya Gazeta

Novaya Gazeta

Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....

 had been murdered while covering abuses by the Russian armed forces

Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are the military services of Russia, established after the break-up of the Soviet Union. On 7 May 1992 Boris Yeltsin signed a decree establishing the Russian Ministry of Defence and placing all Soviet Armed Forces troops on the territory of the RSFSR...

 in Chechnya

Chechnya

The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...

. Radio Free Europe's coverage of the Chechen conflict had caused the Russian Media Ministry

Rospechat

Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation is the regulating state agency within the hierarchy of modern Russian Government...

to declare earlier in the year that the independent radio station was "hostile to our state." Moscow police opened an investigation of Khatloni’s murder, but no arrests were ever made in the case.

Khatloni was survived by his wife Kimmat and a daughter from a previous marriage. He was buried in his native Tajikistan.

External links

• RFE/RL Correspondent Killed In Moscow (September 9, 2000)