Masked gunman kills Russian priest at Moscow church

By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A masked gunman entered a church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticising Islam, prosecutors and church officials said on Friday.

The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country's growing Muslim minority of about 20 million.

The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in his small wooden church in Moscow on Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire, said Anatoly Bagmet, spokesman for the investigative branch of the Prosecutor-General's office.

Sysoyev was shot in the head and neck and died on the way to hospital, Interfax news agency quoted investigators as saying. His choirmaster was injured in the attack, Bagmet said, and is in hospital under armed guard.

"The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime," Bagmet said.

Sysoyev was from Tatarstan, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia on the Volga river. He was threatened after preaching to Muslims and Christians from other denominations.

"I have received 10 threats via e-mail that I shall have my head cut off (if I do not stop preaching to Muslims)", Sysoyev stated on a television programme in February 2008, according to Interfax. "As I see it, it is a sin not to preach to Muslims".

Russia is home to Europe's largest Muslim community and Islam is the country's second-biggest faith, something which Sysoyev criticised.