Musa Muradov

Musa Kaimovich Muradov (; born 1958, in Grozny, Russia) is an ethnic Chechen Russian journalist. In 2003, he was awarded the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists for his reporting on the Second Chechen War.

Background Muradov was born around 1958 in Grozny. He studied journalism at Moscow State University, graduating in 1982. He then joined the staff of Groznensky Rabochy, a weekly newspaper in Grozny that had been established in 1917. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Muradov became the paper's editor-in-chief. Initially, the newspaper, formerly controlled by the Communist Party, was independent. However, in 1993 Dzhokar Dudayev, president of Chechnya's new, unrecognized secessionist government, attempted to convert the paper into an official publication of his party. In reaction, Muradov and most of his staff quit, leading the newspaper to shut down. Muradov found work for a time teaching journalism at a local university, as well as reporting for a small regional publication. In 1994, amid the growing violence of the First Chechen War, he and his family left Grozny for the relative safety of Moscow. Long-time Groznensky Rabochy correspondent Supian Ependiyev was killed covering the aftermath of a rocket attack on a Grozny bazaar on 27 October 1999; while he was conducting his interviews, a second round of rockets struck the bazaar, leaving him with fatal shrapnel injuries. At around this time, the paper was struggling financially, and its building was destroyed in Russian bombing.

In 2009, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, Speaker of the Chechen Parliament and ally of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, denounced Muradov as "a scoundrel and a traitor to the Chechen people" who "has committed a crime against Chechen history", after Muradov published an interview with head of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria government-in-exile Akhmed Zakayev. In the interview, Zakayev had alleged that despite a year of Kadyrov saying publicly that he had invited Zakayev to return to Chechnya, Kadyrov had not extended the invitation in either of their conversations.

International recognition In 2003, Muradov was awarded the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists, "an annual recognition of courageous journalism". The award citation praised Groznensky Rabochy as a "rare voice of reason" in the violence and distorted coverage of Chechnya, as well as Muradov's "refusal" to "become a mouthpiece for either side".