Two Russian nationalists have been jailed for the murders of a human rights lawyer and a journalist near the Kremlin.
The January 2009 shooting of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, a reporter for an opposition newspaper, sparked a global outcry and fuelled criticism that authorities do not do enough to hunt down those who target activists and journalists.
Last month, a Moscow jury convicted Nikita Tikhonov of the murders of Markelov and Baburova and Yevgeniya Khasis as an accessory to the murder of Markelov.
Tikhonov (30), was sentenced to life in prison. Khasis, who is in her mid-20s, was jailed for 18 years. They shared jokes with each other in a glass box in the courtroom as they were being sentenced.
Markelov and Baburova were walking together on a street in an upscale neighbourhood after a news conference when they were fatally shot at close range with an automatic pistol.
Both victims were Russians, not the natives of the Caucasus and Central Asia who are often targeted in hate attacks by Russian racists. Markelov had represented the mother of an anti-fascist campaigner who he said was killed by neo-Nazis.
Prosecutors said Tikhonov and Khasis were members of an ultranationalist group. The jury found they felt "intolerance and ideological hatred" for Markelov because he represented "victims and defendants holding anti-fascist ideologies".
Markelov had gained prominence when he contested the early release of a former Russian tank commander imprisoned for the murder of an 18-year-old woman in the Caucasus republic of Chechnya, where rights groups have accused federal forces of abusing civilians during two wars against separatist rebels.
Baburova was one of a number of Russian journalists whose killings in recent years have darkened Russia's reputation - among them Anna Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic who wrote for Novaya Gazeta and was shot in Moscow in 2006.
The killings highlighted the threat from ultranationalist movements that have been gaining ground and boosting their membership numbers in recent years.
Racial violence exploded in Moscow in December when some 7,000 football hooligans and nationalists chanting racist slogans demonstrated near Red Square and attacked passersby who appeared to be non-Slavic.