Lawyers and public figures polled by the Russian Agency of Legal and Court Information said they were indignant over an attack on Russian daily Kommersant's political correspondent Oleg Kashin and believed that the authorities must necessarily solve this crime.
Kashin was severely beaten by unknown people near his house in Moscow early on Saturday. According to a witness, the journalist was attacked by two people who were waiting for him with a bunch of flowers near his house. Neither money, nor other valuable things have been reported stolen from the journalist.
"Such crimes are always placed under special control of the country's top officials and law-enforcement bodies," Nikolai Klyon, chairman of the presidium of the inter-republican board of lawyers said, adding, however, that such measures had failed to produce any noticeable results in the past few years.
"The investigation into this attack must be fully completed so that the authorities' actions are not again limited to mere talks," he said.
The journalist has been admitted to the intensive care unit of one of Moscow's hospitals. Kashin suffered jaw and leg fractures as a result of the beating.
The attack on Kommersant's political correspondent was probably linked to his work, the newspaper's Editor-in-Chief Mikhail Mikhailin said.
Kommersant is a leading Russian business newspaper owned by tycoon Alisher Usmanov, a co-owner of Russia's third-largest mobile telephone operator MegaFon and major Russian internet investor Digital Sky Technologies Ltd. (DST).
On Saturday, Russia's Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika got the investigation into the attack on Kommersant's journalist Kashin under his special control. Chaika instructed Moscow's Prosecutor Yuri Syomin to coordinate the steps of the law enforcement agencies "in order to solve this crime as soon as possible."
MOSCOW, November 7 (RIA Novosti)
