He was a dissident

His last television report on Channel One earlier this month was about the reconstruction of an Orthodox monastery in Abkhazia, a pro-Russian separatist region of Georgia, RIA Novosti news agency said. Today the body of Channel One correspondent Ilyas Shurpayev was discovered tby firefighters in his rented studio flat. A spokesman for the state-TV channel said a fire was apparently started there after the attack.A porter was quoted as saying Shurpayev had called down to her in the early hours to ask her to let two young men into the building.

More than a dozen journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, have been killed in contract-style killings in Russia since 2000. Hate attacks on members of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus and former Soviet Central Asia are also common in Moscow.

Hours before his death, Shurpayev wrote a blog saying the owners of a Dagestan newspaper had banned his column and told its staff not to mention his name in publications. "Now I am a dissident!" was the title of the last entry in his web piece.

Shurpayev was born in the mostly Muslim Dagestan province. He had worked in Russia's North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan and Chechnya.

Critics say Russia has witnessed a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political freedoms during President Vladimir Putin's eight-year presidency. Top independent television stations have been shut down and print media have also experienced growing official pressure, Pravda writes.