(Xinhua) -- Investigators said Saturday that one of the two murdered Russian journalists was killed because of his work in journalism, Russia's RIA news agency reported. Two television journalists from Russia's southern republic of Daghestan were murdered on Friday in two separate incidents. Ilyas Shurpayev, a journalist with Russia's state-run Channel One, was found stabbed to death in Moscow. Gadzhi Abashilov, head of Daghestan's state-run television station, was gunned down the same day in his car in Daghestan, a volatile province in the North Caucasus.
Investigators said that Abashilov's murder was possibly connected with his professional work. "The investigation is considering several versions. However, the main one is linked to Abashilov's professional activities," said Vladimir Markin, the official spokesman for the Investigation Committee under the Prosecutor-General's Office.
Shurpayev and Abashilov were on a list of names that reporters of a local paper were banned from mentioning, according to RIA reports. On the day before he was killed, Shurpayev mentioned on his Live Journal blog that local independent paper Nastoyashcheye Vremya had blacklisted him. Both of the murdered journalists had been put on the list, a former editor in chief of the paper confirmed. Nastoyashcheye Vremya, a daily featuring news and analysis, was launched in September last year. The paper is well known in Daghestan.