Chechen poet shot dead in Moscow

[RZM]

Source: Reuters

A poet and academic from Russia's volatile region of Chechnya was found dead Wednesday outside a Moscow apartment building in what investigators said appeared to be a contract killing.

Ruslan Akhtakhanov was shot in the head in north Moscow around midnight before his killer escaped in a car, police said. They later found the burned-out vehicle on the southern edge of the city, Russian wire agencies reported.

Akhtakhanov, who had won a prize for his poetry, was an administrator at Moscow's Modern Humanitarian Academy, where he awarded Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov an honorary professorship.

Rights groups say Kadyrov's Chechnya relies on heavy-handed law enforcement techniques including torture, kidnapping and extra-judicial killings to battle the Islamist insurgency.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/us-russia-murder-chechen-idUSTRE7AF1VA20111116