| Irek Murtazin | |
| Birthname: | Irek Minzakievich Murtazin |
| Birth Date: | 5 April 1964 |
| Birth Place: | Bogatye Saby, Sabinsky District, Tatar ASSR, RSFSR, USSR |
| Occupation: | journalist, activist, blogger |
| Family: | married |
| Children: | 2 |
| Url: | irek-murtazin.livdjournal.com |
Irek Minzakievich Murtazin (Tatar: Ирек Мортазин|translit=İrek Mortazin: Russian: Ирек Минзакиевич Муртазин; born 5 April 1964, Bogatye Saby) is a Russian journalist and blogger of Tatar descent, specialist of the International Institute of Research in Policy and the Humanities in Moscow [1] and, since September 2008, publisher of the newspaper Kazan News (Russian: Казанские вести).
In September 2008, he posted information to his blog to the effect that Tatar president Shaimiev had died; this information proved to be false. As a result, he was the subject of a criminal investigation into the matter. On 26 November 2009, Murtazin was found guilty of libel and "instigating hatred and hostility" to an ethnic or social group and sentenced to 1 year, 9 months of hard labor.[2] [3] Murtazin had previously clashed with local and federal elites in his journalistic work; he resigned his post at "Tatarstan" on 14 November 2003 in the wake of a controversial segment in which program participants criticized Tatar policies and the war in Chechnya.[4] In December 2008, he was attacked and beaten near his Kazan apartment by unidentified persons.[5]
In addition to his work as a newspaper and television journalist, Murtazin has published several monographs.