REVIEW TOPICS:
Russia’s FSB has to share responsibility for deaths of journalists, former KGB agent says
One of accused Chechens suggests that FSB agent has relation to Politkovskaya’s murder
40 years ago Soviet leader nearly lost his life: Russia Today TV report
Criminal case brought in Ingushetia on fact of armed resistance to FSB employees in Nazran
Tatar activist warns Russian Federal Security Service to stop repression
Kyrgyzstan State National Security Committee offficers interrogate heads of independent mass media
Former Bulgarian intelligence chief asks for Interior Minister's resignation
Writer Kundera not to sue weekly magazine over Communist secret police informant allegation
Film based on life of CIA Polish spy released in Poland
Russia’s FSB has to share responsibility for deaths of journalists, former KGB agent says
The co-owner of the Novaya gazeta weekly newspaper, the former Lieutenant-Colonel of the KGB, Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, considers that the independent journalism in Britain and
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| A.Baburova, S.Markelov |
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Russia should be protected, BBC News reports.
At the same time he denied that he had closed the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent, belonging to him, and explained that it existed in the form of "samizdat". "If the Moscow authorities have chopped off all channels of distribution of the Moskovsky Korrespondent, it will appear the same way as the Archipelago GULAG,” told Lebedev, answering questions of the BBC Russian service.
Lebedev says that neither he, nor the editorial board of the newspaper "do not understand how to provide security of journalists if the authorities fail to do it". In the interview to BBC he reminded that for last years five employees of the Novaya gazeta had been killed.
In this connection Lebedev told about an intention to address to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) with a request to allow the paper’s journalists to carry firearms for self-defence. He proved expediency of such a step with doubts in capability of law enforcement bodies to protect mass media members. "No FSB will provide our security", stressed Lebedev who served as the KGB officer in the 1980s and early 1990s. The businessman complained about impossibility of protecting of all journalists of the newspaper, however, he recognized that some of them recently had official protection.
Lebedev also noted that the Novaya gazeta had conducted some secret investigations for one and a half year, and nothing was published about them. "Baburova had relation to one of such investigations", marked Lebedev. Anastasia Baburova, journalist contributing to the Novaya gazeta, was shot dead on January 19 together with the lawyer Stanislav Markelov in broad daylight in a crowded street in 15 minutes distance from the Kremlin. «I do not have doubts that this murder should have relation to activity of the Novaya gazeta», declared Lebedev. "I think that the FSB bears the share of responsibility for what has been occurring to the Novaya gazeta».
One of accused Chechens suggests that FSB agent has relation to Politkovskaya’s murder
The lawsuit on the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya on October 7, 2006, has been continuing in the Moscow district military court (MOVS). Ibragim Makhmudov and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov were giving their testimony the day before yesterday, according to online paper Newsland.ru. The defence stopped representing the proofs then and a break was announced in the
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Eventual murderer |
court in hearings till February 2.
Natives of the Chechen Republic of Russia, brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudovs and the former employee of the directorate on struggle against the organized crime Sergei Khadzhikurbanov are considered by investigation as accomplices of assassination of Politkovskaya. The former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Pavel Ryaguzov has been charged with other crime allegedly accomplished together with Khadzhikurbanov. The eventual executor of the murder, the third brother of Makhmudovs, Rustam, is registered in search, and the customer of the crime is still unknown.
According to investogators, it was Khadzhikurbanov who searched an executor of murder, organized Politkovskaya’s shadowing and also gave to the murderer a pistol from which she was killed.
Khadzhikurbanov told that having spent a prison term for excess of service powers, he left on freedom on September 22, 2006, two weeks before the murder of the journalist, and all this time he spent with his family. He also said that October 7 was the birthday of his mother, and on that day in 2006 he with his wife and children went to visit her.
Khadzhikurbanov asserted that the DNA analysis did not confirm his participation in the murder. He stressed that all charges against him had been constituted only on false testimonies of witness Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who in his opinion is a FSB agent and has direct relation to the murder of the journalist.
Khadzhikurbanov named Pavlyuchenkov’s statement that he (Khadhirkurbanov) allegedly suggested Pavlyuchenkov "to work on Politkovskaya" nothing but blackmail. "Pavlyuchenkov had strong reasons for it,” Khadzhikurbanov said. “He is now an agent of the FSB of the Russian Federation, and earlier when I was an employee of the Ministry of Interior, I had called him to criminal liability, daily Kommersant cites Khadzhikurbanov.
Criminal case brought in Ingushetia on fact of armed resistance to FSB employees in Nazran
Criminal case has been brought in Ingushetia on the fact of rendering of resistance to employees of the Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate in Nazran, news agency RIA Novosti reports, referring to a source in law enforcement bodies of Ingushetia.
Approximately at 15:00 local time yesterday in the centre of Nazran two local residents who were located in a photographer's studio showed armed resistance to employees of the regional FSB directorate of Ingushetia who were spending operative and search activities. The security forces members opened reciprocal fire and the prospective members of illegal armed group were killed.
According to the security services the killed insurgents were engaged in manufacturing of self-made explosives and were involved in a number of attacks on civilians and employees of law enforcement bodies, news agency adds.
Kyrgyzstan State National Security Committee officers interrogate heads of independent mass media
Employees of Talas directorate of the State National Security Committee (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan
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| Kyrgyzstan GKNB building |
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summoned heads of some regional independent mass media for questioning, Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations reports, referring to local sources.
According to the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Daban, and also of Talas district newspaper Manas Ordo, Mira Seidikerimova, from the beginning the GKNB officers called the newspaper’s editorial board and learned when she would be at her workplace. Later they came to the newspaper’s office and were interested in data on the employees, periodicity of issuing of the paper, since what year the newspaper has been published. The GKNB told Seidikerimova that they question “all mass media outlets”.
The security service officers questioned also the assistant to the director of radio Next.FM, Suiyun Omurbekov. He said they were intersted in the list of employees and their posts. The same questions were asked to founder of the community radio Radiomost Gulmira Osmonova.
This is not the first case when the GKNB employees summon representatives of mass media for conversations and questioning. So, on December 5, 2008, the founder of the local radio station Buran, independent journalist Rakhmanzhan Islamov, was summoned for questioning to the GKNB directorate in the city of Tokmok. The security service officers told him that investigation on the fact of robbery of Jalal-Abad branch of National Bank in 2005 was not in the radio’s competence. Shortly before the journalist of the independent newspaper Vadim Nochevkin was summoned for questioning after publication of his article on crisis situation in water and power engineering of Kyrgyzstan.
The public association Journalists considers that the so-called friendly chats held by the security service officers is nothing but return to technologies of intimidation of journalists which were widely applied in last years of the ex-president of Kyrgyzstan. Those friendly chats can strengthen self-censorship of the Kyrgyz journalists, according to the public association.
40 years ago Soviet leader nearly lost his life: Russia Today TV report
Forty years ago, a Soviet army deserter fired at a motorcade he thought was carrying the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev into the Kremlin, Russian TV in English, Russia Today, reports.
Army officer Victor Ilyin decided to act on January 22, 1969 when the crews of the Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 spaceships were due to receive state awards. They were met by Brezhnev at the city’s Vnukovo Airport and then headed for the Kremlin in a motorcade.
Ilyin, born in 1947 in Leningrad, had fled his military base near St Petersburg with two fully-loaded Makarov pistols in his coat. A KGB investigator Aleksandr Zagvozdin says by then Ilyin had everything perfectly planned for an assassination; and he picked the best time possible. Some say the KGB had already tracked him down and were using the assassination attempt to prove themselves.
In Moscow Ilyin spent a day at his uncle’s, who was a Soviet police worker. Then, stealing his uniform he left for Red Square. Oleg Matveev, a FSB historian, says the KGB men were already looking for the Ilyin but nobody expected that he would be wearing a militia uniform; everyone was looking for a man dressed as a military officer or a civilian.
Ilyin simply walked into the Kremlin through a tourist entrance, pretending to be part of the cordon. He spent the next two hours, undisturbed, looking for the best firing position, choosing a place just a few metres from the entrance gate. As soon as the VIP motorcade entered the Kremlin’s Borovitskaya Tower’s gates, Ilyin took out his pistols and fired them
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Leonid Brezhnev |
together at the second vehicle, occupied by the cosmonauts.
A bullet hit the second car, killing the limousine driver Ilya Zharkov. Spaceman Beregovoy was hit in the face, a bullet scratched other cosmonaut Nikolayev’s back. Another bullet hit Vasiliy Zatsipilin, part of the motorcycle escort that day. Despite being shot, Zatsipilin managed to aim his motorcycle at Ilyin, and bring him down.
Three hours later, the KBG head and the future USSR leader, Yury Andropov, was personally questioning the man. Ilyin confessed that he was planning to take Brezhnev’s place, forming a non-communist party. At this point he was facing the death penalty, but after a long investigation, he was considered insane and placed in a mental hospital in solitary confinement for twenty years. He was set free in the 1990s following a Supreme Court ruling. Russia Today found him in St. Petersburg, single, living off a modest pension in a government-provided apartment due to disabilities. He refused to be interviewed on camera, but told the TV crew that most of all he regrets that an innocent man had died.
This was the first of three alleged attempts to assassinate Brezhnev, and apparently the only real one. The other two – expected to take place in France and Germany – were believe to exist only in overprotective KGB minds, Russia Today concludes.
Tatar activist warns Russian Federal Security Service to stop repression
Fawzie Bayramova, 58, the chairwoman of the Milli Mejlis, a self-proclaimed pan-Tatar parliament, says she will go on a hunger strike if Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) continues to pressure her, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.
Bayramova who is being investigated for "sowing ethnic discord", told RFE/RL that if she is sent to prison "and something happens to me, people should know that I will go on a hunger strike immediately."
Earlier this month, several apartments of Tatar activists were searched by FSB officers in Chally, Tatarstan's second-largest city. The FSB searches occurred after the Milli Mejlis issued a statement urging the international community to recognize Tatarstan as a sovereign state, as Russia did with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, RFE/RL marks.
Former Bulgarian intelligence chief asks for Interior Minister's resignation
"The request for Interior Minister Mihail Mikov's resignation is a completely adequate one", claims the former Bulgarian National Intelligence Service chief, Dimo Gyaurov, DeltaNews reports today.
According to Gyaurov the incident with the man who died while in custody after the anti-government protests is a strong enough argument. A week later another detainee died after being interrogated with a lie detector.
The former intelligence chief also demanded that minister Mikov would provide the files that say what the last died detainee was arrested for, according to Bulgarian News Network. "The five days of all national protests against the government are a result of its policies", it cites Gayurov. He recalls seeing the furious expressions on the faces of policemen guarding the houses of parliament, who later on January 14 were beating many of the peaceful protesters.
According to the member of the ruling Bulgarian Socialist party, Yanaki Stoilov, however the request for a resignation "isn't commensurable with the situation with the protests". According to him, putting focus on the request for Mikov's resignation has made all the protesting groups' demands way blurrier, Bulgarian News Network adds.
Writer Kundera not to sue weekly magazine over Communist secret police informant allegation
Czech-born writer Milan Kundera definitively decided not to sue the Czech weekly magazine Respekt for its article claiming that he informed the communist police on a western agent in 1950, Jiri Srstka, head of the agency Dilia representing Kundera, news agency CTK reports, referring to Nova Television.
"Mr Kundera will not sue Respekt. Though he will keep his reasons to himself, I point out that it certainly is not because he would feel guilty in the way Respekt presented it," Srstka told TV Nova.
Kundera, a famous novelist now aged 79 who has been living in France for three decades, dismissed the information of having reported anybody to the police in the 1950s. He demanded that Respekt apologise to him, but the weekly rejected it, saying the article was correct, CTK notes.
According to the archive document material published by Respekt, Kundera, then a 21-year-old student, in 1950 informed the Czechoslovak police on western agent Miroslav Dvoracek who was subsequently sentenced to 22 years in prison and he eventually spent 14 years in uranium mines.
Film based on life of CIA Polish spy released in Poland
War Games, the film based on the life of spy Ryszard Kuklinski and one of the most eagerly awaited documentaries ever made in Poland, has gone on general release in Polish cinemas, Polish Radio reports. The American premiere of the movie took place last December at the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, preceded by a closed screening for active CIA agents. The film tells the story of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who passed top secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1981, including plans for a military onslaught on the West and for the imposition of martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity movement.
Shortly after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Kuklinski was extracted from Poland by the CIA, along with his family. In 1984, a military court in Warsaw sentenced him to death. The sentence was annulled after the fall of communism. Kuklinski died in Florida in 2004.
War Games took director Dariusz Jablonski five years of painstaking research. It was shot in Poland, the United States, Russia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Belgium,
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| Kuklinski's ID card |
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and includes interviews with high-ranking CIA generals, former US presidential security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Polish president Lech Walesa, Polish generals Jaruzelski and Kiszczak, commander of Warsaw Pact forces Soviet Marshal Kulikov, Kuklinski’s co-workers and friends, and his widow.
After many months, Ryszard Kuklinski yielded to persuation from Jablonski and agreed to be interviewed for the film. He died, however, several days before the interview was due to take place.
In his review of War Games entitled ‘The spy who remained in the cold’, Edward Lucas wrote in the London Economist: ‘The post-communist Polish authorities were shockingly slow to rehabilitate Kuklinski. Many Poles thought he was not a hero, but a traitor who had broken his military oath. Only in September 1997 were charges of espionage dropped; he finally returned to Poland for a visit in 1998.
The film casts a thought-provoking light on that controversy, which the new film is likely to reignite. Lech Walesa’s evasive answers to the question why he as president failed to pardon Kuklinski are striking (he says he was surrounded by ex-communists but does not explain why he couldn’t overrule them). Also troubling are the mysterious deaths of both his sons in 1994: just a boating mishap and a hit-and-run road accident? Or the belated revenge of his former colleagues? The film cannot answer that. Nor does it answer the question of who tipped off the Soviet authorities that the West had a mole in the Polish military: was it one of the traitors who has since been exposed? Or one who has to this day covered his tracks successfully?’.
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