Stanislav Markelov was shot dead on Monday afternoon in broad daylight in downtown Moscow. The case also covers Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova, 25, who was wounded in the shooting and died in hospital later on Monday.
The committee said its chairman, Alexander Bastrykin, had made the decision to transfer the criminal file from the Moscow City Investigation Department due to "the audacity of the murder of the lawyer and the journalist in the center of Moscow and the public outcry that followed."
The committee said Bastrykin had ordered that the team of investigators include the most skilled experts.
According to Bastrykin, the case would not be easy because of the large number of connections that the victims had.
Markelov had appealed against the early release of former Russian army colonel Yury Budanov.
Budanov, who commanded a tank regiment during the second military campaign in Chechnya, was convicted in the summer of 2003 of strangling 18-year-old Elsa Kungayeva three years earlier and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. He was paroled earlier this month.
Besides representing Kungayeva's family, Markelov had started an independent investigation into a near-fatal attack on Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the Khimki Pravda local newspaper, who fought a campaign to protect a forest near Moscow from destruction by real estate developers.
The Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, called on the Russian authorities on Tuesday "to investigate Markelov's murder, as well as previous attacks on human rights activists, journalists and members of nongovernmental organizations, and to bring the guilty to justice."
