Watchdog

Amnesty International has urged Pakistan to release a Pashtun rights activist who was detained immediately after her arrival in the country.

The London-based rights group condemned in a statement on October 12 the arrest of Gulalai Ismail, who was detained upon arrival from London at an airport in the capital, Islamabad.

"Gulalai Ismail must be immediately and unconditionally released. There is no justification whatsoever for her detention or for imposing a travel ban on her. She is being detained solely for her peaceful human rights work," Rabia Mehmood, South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said.

Ismail is a critic of the Pakistani military's operations in the country's tribal regions, in which many civilians have been killed.

She has been a supporter of the Pashtun Protection Movement, a group which denounces perceived high-handedness by security forces and their operations in the country's northwest.

The group calls for judicial probes into those killed by the military in the name of its war on terror.

With reporting by AP

A top Russian investigator involved in serious economic crimes and corruption cases has been shot dead in the Moscow region, officials say.

The Investigative Committee's Moscow branch told Russian news agencies that Colonel Yevgenia Shishkina was shot in the neck on October 10 when she was leaving her apartment block in the town of Arkhangelskoye, near the capital.

Committee spokeswoman Olga Vrady said Shishkina had received threats and that her car was burned in an arson attack several months ago.

Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement that its chief, Aleksandr Bastrykin, took the investigation into Shishkina's killing under his personal control and ordered the Main Investigative Directorate to probe the killing.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax