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| - Amnesty International on Friday condemned a "brazen" attack in Chechnya on a prominent investigative reporter and rights lawyer and urged Russian central authorities to investigate. A mob attacked Yelena Milashina, a journalist for independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and lawyer Marina Dubrovina, who has defended Chechen rights activists, late Thursday at their hotel in the regional capital of Grozny, the group said. "This brazen attack is appalling," Amnesty's deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, Denis Krivosheev, said in a statement. "As there is little hope of effective investigation at the local level, the federal Russian authorities must step in," he said, adding that they have "clearly indicated that they have no intention of doing so." Milashina reported in Novaya Gazeta that a group of more than 15 people including women in black hijabs approached the women in the hotel lobby and asked her why she "defends Wahhabis who killed our husbands," suggesting that activists support Islamist extremists. The group knocked the women onto the floor and hit them and pulled their hair while a man filmed them, she said. The newspaper posted a photograph of red marks on Milashina's forehead. Rights organisations and activists have repeatedly come under attack in the region tightly controlled by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic on Friday slammed "the latest of a series of worrying attacks on human rights defenders and critics" in Chechnya and called on Russia to "urgently reverse this unacceptable situation." Milashina has reported on the persecution of gay people and the planting of drugs on regime opponents in Chechnya. In 2017 her reporting prompted a call for "jihad" against her and her newspaper at the main mosque in Grozny. Dubrovina has defended clients including activist Oyub Titiyev of respected Russian rights group Memorial, who was convicted of drug possession last year in a sentence that prompted an international outcry. He was freed on parole months later. am/har
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