Iskandar Khatloni ( tg, Искандар Хатлонӣ; October 1954 – September 21, 2000) was a journalist from

Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...

who worked for

Radio Free Europe Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East where it says tha ...

and was murdered in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

while covering the

Second Chechen War The Second Chechen War (russian: Втора́я чече́нская война́, ) took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 ...

Life

In the 1980s at the onset of glasnost in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Khatloni began worked as a BBC correspondent. In 1996 he became a correspondent for the

Tajik language Tajik (Tajik: , , ), also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: , , ) or Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligi ...

division of the

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

-based Radio Free Europe. In addition to his journalistic work, Khatloni was a distinguished

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

and had published four volumes of verse. Before his death Khatloni had been assigned to Moscow to report on human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Murder

On the evening of 22 September 2000 Khatloni was attacked inside of his Moscow apartment by an unknown, axe-wielding assailant. Khatloni was struck twice in the head and then stumbled onto the street and collapsed. He was later found by a passerby and taken to Moscow's Botkin Hospital, where he died that night of a serious head wound. Speculation surrounding Khatloni's murder has focused on his coverage of the war in Chechnya, a politically sensitive topic that brought great peril to Russian-based journalists covering the subject. Just the previous spring, Igor Domnikov of Novaya Gazeta had been murdered while covering abuses by the Russian armed forces in Chechnya. Radio Free Europe's coverage of the Chechen conflict had caused the Russian Media Ministry to declare earlier in the year that the independent radio station was "hostile to our state." Moscow police opened an investigation of Khatloni's murder, but no arrests were ever made in the case. Khatloni was survived by his wife Kimmat and a daughter from a previous marriage. He was buried in his native Tajikistan.

References

External links

RFE/RL Correspondent Killed In Moscow
(September 22, 2000) {{DEFAULTSORT:Khatloni, Iskandar Assassinated Tajikistani journalists Tajikistani writers 20th-century Tajikistani poets Tajikistani male writers Soviet journalists 1954 births 2000 deaths Tajikistani people murdered abroad People murdered in Moscow Journalists killed in Russia 20th-century poets 20th-century journalists Maxim Gorky Literature Institute alumni 2000 murders in Russia

Life

Murder

See also

References

External links