lyot
11 september 2004, 09:20
Russian Journalist: FSB Wanted to Kill Me
MosNews
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who got seriously sick while
trying to get to Beslan on a day of the school siege suspects the
agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of having poisoned her.
Speaking to the RTL Radio France on Friday, she told she asked a cup
of tea and fainted soon after having drunk. "In the hospital, a
physician told me of a serious poisoning with an unidentified toxic
agent. I suspect three FSB officials who were on the same plane in
the business class of involvement in this vile act. One of them asked
the air hostess a question, the other put a pill into the cup. It
dissolves in a moment, and it is a miracle that I survived. I am
sure: they wanted to kill me," Politkovskaya said.
She added she did not make any secret that she planned to start
negotiations with terrorists in the South Russian town of Beslan. But
she could not believe the special services could act like this. At
the same time, she was sure her colleague Yuri Shchekochikhin who
died last July was also poisoned. However, the reasons of his death
are still unclear.
On Thursday, Guardian newspaper published a more detailed story told
by Politkovskaya. She also suspected FSB agents of having tapped her
phone conversations before her flight to Beslan. A driver who put her
on the flight from Moscow to the southern city of Rostov-on-Don said
he was called by FSB. She was not absolutely sure that the three
suspicious persons in the plane were secret agents but "my eyes meet
those of three passengers sitting in a group: malicious eyes, looking
at an enemy. But I don't pay attention. This is the way most FSB
people look at me," she wrote in the paper.
All the tests taken at the airport by the physicians after
Politkovskaya fainted "have been destroyed — on orders "from on
high", say the doctors."
A similar story happened with Nana Lezhava, a Georgian television
reporter detained in Beslan. A Georgian medical expert quoted by the
Associated Press said she was drugged by the authorities. Urine
samples taken from Lezhava traces of tranquilizers. According to the
Kavkasia-Press news agency, tests showed the presence of an agent in
the benzodiazepine group. The drug makes a person talkative and
complacent. In an interview to her television channel, Rustavi-2, she
told she slept for 24 hours after drinking coffee in a holding cell.
Her colleagues suspect she was detained and drugged in connection
with her coverage of Beslan tragedy. She was detained together with
the cameramen Levan Tetvadze.
Another journalist who tried to get to Beslan, Andrei Babitsky from
Radio Free Europe was detained in Moscow first on suspicion of
carrying explosives, then of hooliganism.
"We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum
that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the
internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest,
if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to
Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial —
whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit,"
Politkovskaya wrote.
MosNews
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who got seriously sick while
trying to get to Beslan on a day of the school siege suspects the
agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of having poisoned her.
Speaking to the RTL Radio France on Friday, she told she asked a cup
of tea and fainted soon after having drunk. "In the hospital, a
physician told me of a serious poisoning with an unidentified toxic
agent. I suspect three FSB officials who were on the same plane in
the business class of involvement in this vile act. One of them asked
the air hostess a question, the other put a pill into the cup. It
dissolves in a moment, and it is a miracle that I survived. I am
sure: they wanted to kill me," Politkovskaya said.
She added she did not make any secret that she planned to start
negotiations with terrorists in the South Russian town of Beslan. But
she could not believe the special services could act like this. At
the same time, she was sure her colleague Yuri Shchekochikhin who
died last July was also poisoned. However, the reasons of his death
are still unclear.
On Thursday, Guardian newspaper published a more detailed story told
by Politkovskaya. She also suspected FSB agents of having tapped her
phone conversations before her flight to Beslan. A driver who put her
on the flight from Moscow to the southern city of Rostov-on-Don said
he was called by FSB. She was not absolutely sure that the three
suspicious persons in the plane were secret agents but "my eyes meet
those of three passengers sitting in a group: malicious eyes, looking
at an enemy. But I don't pay attention. This is the way most FSB
people look at me," she wrote in the paper.
All the tests taken at the airport by the physicians after
Politkovskaya fainted "have been destroyed — on orders "from on
high", say the doctors."
A similar story happened with Nana Lezhava, a Georgian television
reporter detained in Beslan. A Georgian medical expert quoted by the
Associated Press said she was drugged by the authorities. Urine
samples taken from Lezhava traces of tranquilizers. According to the
Kavkasia-Press news agency, tests showed the presence of an agent in
the benzodiazepine group. The drug makes a person talkative and
complacent. In an interview to her television channel, Rustavi-2, she
told she slept for 24 hours after drinking coffee in a holding cell.
Her colleagues suspect she was detained and drugged in connection
with her coverage of Beslan tragedy. She was detained together with
the cameramen Levan Tetvadze.
Another journalist who tried to get to Beslan, Andrei Babitsky from
Radio Free Europe was detained in Moscow first on suspicion of
carrying explosives, then of hooliganism.
"We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum
that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the
internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest,
if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to
Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial —
whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit,"
Politkovskaya wrote.