The deaths [continuing] of Russian journalists

Perhaps surprising coming from BusinessWeek, but this piece seeks to look into the deaths of Russian journalist in contract-style killings - none of which have been solved! Mysterious? All too coincidental? Absolutely!

"Each week, Rimma Maximova makes a phone call to the prosecutor's office in St. Petersburg. And each week she hears the same thing. Staff tell her they have no more information about her son Maxim's disappearance.

Maxim Maximov was her only child. He became a talented, methodical, and respected investigative journalist. At the time he went missing, aged 41, he was a special correspondent for the St. Petersburg weekly magazine Gorod. Before that he'd been a leading reporter for the Agency for Journalistic Investigations.

But one day in June 2004, Maximov left his apartment apparently planning to be out for only an hour or two. He never returned. No trace of him has ever been found, and no one has been arrested for abducting or killing him.

He is one of more than a dozen journalists believed to have been murdered in Russia because of their work since 2000, the year President Vladimir Putin came to power."

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