Desclasificados
Las declaraciones de Politkovskaya

Russian Journalist: FSB Wanted to Kill Me
Created: 10.09.2004 20:17 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 20:17 MSK, 21 hours 32 minutes ago

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.

Publicado por magda Septiembre 11, 2004 05:58 PM | TrackBack