Reply #18: remember the two critical journalists that ...

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/06/012.html

2 Reporters Unable to Travel to Beslan
The Moscow Times

Under suspicious circumstances, two prominent Moscow journalists known for their critical coverage of the military campaign in Chechnya failed to make it to North Ossetia to cover the hostage crisis in Beslan.

Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky was detained Thursday at Vnukovo Airport and prevented from flying to Mineralniye Vody while police, who said they suspected him of carrying explosives, searched his bags.

After no explosives were found, Babitsky was released, but two men approached him and started provoking him. All three men were detained, and Babitsky was charged with "hooliganism." He was sentenced Friday to five days in jail.

In a separate incident Thursday, Anna Politkovskaya, who covers Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, fell ill on her way to Beslan and had to be hospitalized. Her editor said she was poisoned.

Politkovskaya was flying from Vnukovo Airport to Rostov-on-Don and fainted on the plane. Immediately after landing, she was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found she had been poisoned, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Muratov said Politkovskaya had not eaten anything that day and she felt sick after drinking tea on the plane. He did not speculate on who might have poisoned her. Politkovskaya is now recovering in a Moscow clinic.

The web site Grani.ru, citing her colleagues at Novaya Gazeta, reported that Politkovskaya and other journalists were prevented from boarding one flight to Rostov-on-Don, but then the captain of another flight to the same city recognized her and welcomed her on board.

Politkovskaya was to have taken part in negotiations with the hostage-takers in Beslan, according to some reports.

She was among those who negotiated with the Chechen militants who took hundreds of people hostage in the Dubrovka theater in October 2002.

Babitsky grabbed headlines in 2000 when he was arrested by federal forces in Chechnya and later exchanged for Russian prisoners of war held by separatists.

"Both cases are very suspicious," said Oleg Panfilov, the director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. "As for Babitsky's case, it is clear that it is a mere provocation."