Journalists

Id: 280
Date: 21/03/2008
First: Ilyas
Surname: SHURPAYEV
Sex/Age: M, 33
Incident: homicide
Motive: ?J
Place: flat
Job: journalist
Medium: TV
Federal District Plus: Moscow
Street, Town, Region: Veshnikh vod Street
Freelance: no
Local/National: national, Channel One
Other Ties
Cause of Death: murder, stabbed
Legal Qualification: 105.2 (murder)
Impunity: trial, conviction, 01 July 2008

On 21 March 2008 Ilyas Shurpayev, a journalist with Channel One TV, was murdered in Moscow. His body was found in a burning flat, which the journalist rented in north-east Moscow. Firemen called out by neighbours found Shurpayev’s body, bearing stab wounds and with a belt tight round his neck, after they had extinguished the blaze.

All versions of the death were considered but the principal interpretation was that the murder was linked to personal motives. Six days later it was announced that more than a dozen varied experiments had been conducted, including DNA tests. On 29 March three suspects were detained in Tajikistan, accused of stealing a large sum of money from the flat and Shurpayev’s personal belongings: one of them was in possession of the dead man’s wristwatch and mobile phone. In July they were sentenced to many years imprisonment for the murder of Shurpayev.

Shurpayev came from Dagestan and before moving to Channel One he worked for NTV’s bureau in the North Caucasus, preparing reports on Abkhazia and Dagestan.

He fell out of favour with the owners of the Nastoyachshee Vremya newspaper in Dagestan, where he had published earlier and, to his own amazement, headed a list of people not to be mentioned there: “The biggest joke is that I did not publish anything seditious in this newspaper apart from notes about my travels, in which I do not touch on the political situation in Zimbabwe [read, Dagestan, tr.], I only describe where I went, what I ate and who I saw ...”

On 29 March the majority of Dagestan newspapers appeared with a blank third page in protest against the murders of Abashilov and Shurpayev.