Calling for a full investigation into how she died, the press freedom organisation voiced concern about the two people who were tried and convicted with her as the same secret trial on 25 August, one of whom was a fixer for the French television production company Galaxie-Presse.

Reporters Without Borders has learned that police took Muradova’s adult children this morning to the Ashgabat morgue where they informed them of her death and showed them the body. There was a head wound and many marks on the rest of the body. Sources had previously reported that Muradova was mistreated following her arrest on 16 June and while she was awaiting trial.

“It is essential that the international community, especially the European countries, the United States and Russia, should demand to know what happened,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Impunity and indifference are the worst form to treatment for journalists who fall victim to the enemies of press freedom and for their relatives.”

The organisation also voiced “great concern” about the fate of Muradova’s co-defendants, fixer Annakurban Amanklychev and human rights activist Sapardurdy Khajiyev, who received sentences of six and seven years respectively at the same trial, that was held secretly without any independent observers and lasted less than two hours.

Reporters Without Borders September 14, 2006