Rights Lawyer, Journalist Killed In Moscow

A lawyer who had opposed the early release of a Russian colonel convicted of killing a Chechen woman was shot and killed after a press conference in central Moscow on Monday, officials said.

A journalist was also fatally wounded in the attack by an unknown gunman, who escaped after shooting lawyer Stanislav Markelov, officials said.

Sergei Sokolov, editor of Novaya Gazeta, said that Anastasia Baburova died on the operating table hours after Monday's shooting.

A deputy editor at the newspaper, Andrei Lipsky, said earlier that Baburova was shot when she tried to intervene after a gunman fatally shot Markelov. He was shot in the head by someone using a pistol with a silencer, reports CBS News producer Svetlana Berdnikova in Moscow.

Baburova was a freelance journalist who had worked for the paper.

Markelov had told reporters he may file an international court appeal against the early release of Col. Yuri Budanov from prison last week, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency.

Markelov had also represented slain Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who had written extensively about human rights violations in Chechnya. In addition, he worked for activists who battled abuses by Russia's military, and represented a Chechen woman who was a victim in a 2002 hostage-taking attack on a Moscow theater.

Markelov was gunned down near a central Moscow building where he had just finished the news conference, according to Viktoria Tsyplenkova, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office Investigative Committee.

Budanov was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years for murdering 18-year-old Heda Kungayeva by strangling her after believing she was a rebel sniper. His case had been closely watched as a test of authorities' determination to deal with rights abuses in Chechnya.