Russian priest slain after death threats

MOSCOW, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- A Russian Orthodox priest who worked with Muslim immigrants received more than a dozen death threats before he was shot to death, a newspaper says.

Daniil Sysoyev, 34, was shot in the head by a masked gunman in St. Thomas Church in southern Moscow, police said.

The killer entered the church, asked for Sysoyev by name and opened fire with a pistol at close range, RIA Novosti reported. The priest died later in a hospital. His assistant was badly wounded in the attack.

"The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime," a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General's Office said in comments broadcast on the Rossiya state-run TV channel.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Friday Sysoyev had revealed in a recent interview with one of its journalists that he had received 14 death threats by phone and e-mail.

"They've threatened to cut my head off 14 times," the newspaper quoted the priest as saying. "The FSB (Federal Security Service) got in touch with me a year ago to say they had uncovered a murder plot against me."

Sysoyev also told the newspaper that in the past year, his church had "christened 80 Muslims, among them Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens and Dagestanis."

He said other Orthodox priests were "afraid" to carry out missionary work among Muslim immigrants.

"They are afraid of revenge from the Muslim world," he said.