US condemns attack on Russian journalist and lawyer in Chechnya

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. is "appalled" by a brutal attack in Chechnya on a prominent female Russian journalist and a lawyer, the State Department said in a statement on Thursday, and it urged Russia to conduct a transparent probe and ensure justice.

Armed masked men on Tuesday attacked Yelena Milashina, a journalist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper who was in Chechnya with lawyer Alexander Nemov when they were ambushed as they drove from the airport, according to Milashina's employer and rights groups. Russia on Wednesday opened a criminal case into the attack.

Milashina and Nemov had planned to attend a court hearing in the case of a woman they believed was being unjustly persecuted for political reasons. The attack on them, in which their assailants put guns to their heads, shaved Milashina's head, doused her with green dye, and stabbed Nemov in the leg - prevented them from attending.

They were flown back to Moscow for medical treatment amid calls from the Kremlin for the authorities in Chechnya, a southern mainly Muslim region ruled by Ramzan Kadyrov, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, to investigate.

"The attack against Ms. Milashina is tragically the latest in a pattern of violence against prominent investigative journalists in Russia that has met little resistance from the authorities," the State Department said. It accused Russia of violating international human rights obligations.

Russia's Investigative Committee, the equivalent of the U.S. FBI, said in a statement on Wednesday that investigators in Chechnya had opened criminal cases.

Novaya Gazeta said Milashina had been examined in a Moscow clinic which had concluded that she had sustained a closed craniocerebral injury, up to 14 fractures of the bones in her hands, and multiple soft tissue contusions.

Milashina has spent years investigating purported human rights abuses in Chechnya. Novaya Gazeta was one of Russia's few independent news outlets until the government stripped it of its license last year.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Marguerita Choy)