HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND THREE JOURNALISTS BEATEN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 005584

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/29/2017
TAGS: PHUM PGOV KDEM KPAO RS
SUBJECT: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND THREE JOURNALISTS BEATEN
IN INGUSHETIA


Classified By: Political Counselor Alice G. Wells for reason 1.4(d).


1. (C) Summary: In the Ingushetia capital of Nazran on
November 24, masked gunmen abducted a human rights worker and
three Moscow television journalists from their hotel rooms,
robbed them of their equipment and notebooks, and threatened
them with execution. The gunmen then took the four victims
to a field where they severely beat them and left them
without clothes or shoes in sub-freezing temperatures. The
attacks may have been intended to seize footage of an
Ingushetia special forces operation that resulted in a boy's
death, or to prevent the journalists from covering
demonstrations scheduled for later that day in Nazran. The
regional government first dismissed the account of the
abduction as fabricated until the President of Ingushetia
announced that he was taking personal control of the
investigation. Following demands from human rights
activists, Chairwoman of the President's Human Rights Council
Ella Pamfilova stepped in. End summary.

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Abduction and Beating
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2. (C) Shortly after midnight on November 24, five masked
gunmen burst into the hotel rooms of Oleg Orlov, a member of
the human rights group Memorial, and three Moscow-based
television journalists. The journalists work for national
television channel REN-TV's news program "24," and were
meeting in one hotel room to plan the next day's coverage of
the demonstrations in Nazran against recent human rights
abuses in Ingushetia. Orlov wrote in a statement to police
that the gunmen had asked why Orlov and the journalists had
come to Nazran, and then seized all of their possessions
(including computers, cameras, phones, and notebooks). The
gunmen then placed black plastic bags over the men's' heads,
led them to a van, and then drove them on backroads for more
than an hour. During the trip, the gunmen accused them (in
unaccented Russian) of transporting explosives into
Ingushetia. Upon arriving at a field near the Chechen
border, the gunmen pulled the men out of the van and
threatened to shoot them. The gunmen then stripped the men
down to their underwear, forced them to lie on the ground,
and then kicked and stomped them, breaking the jaw of one
journalist. The gunmen then left, and the men walked to the
nearest village.


3. (C) The police in the village drove the men to the police
in Nazran, where police took their statements. Orlov was
released by noon, in time to monitor the demonstrations in
Nazran's main square, but the journalists were held for
questioning at the police station for 18 hours with no access
to medical assistance until after the protest of 300
demonstrators had been violently dispersed by the security
services. One journalist with head injuries was hospitalized
upon his return to Moscow and is not expected to be released
for ten days.

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Local Reaction
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4. (C) The region's interior ministry (MVD) issued a
statement that stories of the attack were untrue, and that
"this provocative insinuation is a political trick to
discredit the public image of the administration." Soon
after it became clear that this story was becoming a public
relations problem, Ingushetia President Murat Zyazikov
announced that he would personally oversee the investigation.
According to Orlov, President Zyazikov personally apologized
to the journalists (but not to Orlov),saying that
"destructive forces" were active in the Republic, and that
his own family members had been kidnapped in the past.


5. (C) On November 28, REN-TV Deputy Director Maksim
Troepolskiy told us that the REN-TV crew had been in Nazran
to film the Dissenters March on November 24, and had earlier
filmed Ingushetia Special Forces (Spetsnats) storming a
building. The crew filmed the operation in which a six
year-old boy was accidentally killed by a ricochet. As the
boy's mother turned towards the Spetsnats soldiers with her
arms out, they shot at her feet and legs. Troepolskiy said
that the crew managed to ship some of the footage back to
Moscow, but that most of it was confiscated by the masked
gunmen during the hotel room raid.


6. (C) The prosecutor in Ingushetia has opened investigations
into "interfering with the legal professional activities of a
journalist, "illegal entry into living quarters with the
intent of violence," and "theft," instead of assault and
kidnapping.

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The Human Rights Community Reacts
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7. (SBU) In an open appeal to Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir
Lukin and to Chairwoman of the President's Human Rights
Council Ella Pamfilova, the members of the President's
Council on Civil Society and Human Rights and the members of
the Expert Committee on Upholding Human Rights have requested
a federal investigation into the attack and into the action
of the Ingushetia authorities. The signatories, which
included Svetlana Gannushkina, Sergey Kovalev, Lyudmila
Alekseyeva, Aleksey Simonov, and others, complained that the
local prosecutor was failing to investigate such obvious
charges as kidnapping, attempted murder, and battery. They
also noted that the prosecutors should be investigating
"robbery" not "theft" since the materials had been taken at
gunpoint.


8. (SBU) On November 27, Ella Pamfilova requested permission
from Prosecutor General Yuriy Chaika to take over the
investigation. (Note: It is not clear what Pamfilova's
request means, as her office has no legal authority to
conduct investigations.) On Radio Svoboda, Pamfilova
expressed alarm over increasing violence against journalists.
In a public statement, Pamfilova called on federal and
regional authorities to restrain themselves "and to prevent
lower levels of government from taking illegal and arbitrary
administrative measures against citizens, including placing
restrictions on rallies, marches and demonstrations, limiting
freedom of expression, infringing upon the rights of citizens
to receive comprehensive and reliable information, as well as
impeding journalists in performing their professional duties."

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Speculation on Culprits and Motives, But No Proof
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9. (C) REN-TV's Troepolskiy suspects that Ingush Spetsnats
were behind the attack in response to the REN-TV filming of
their operation. An episode of "24" that aired on November
28 contained footage shot on November 23rd that showed
massive damage to a bullet-riddled home in Ingushetia and a
photo of the boy who was killed. Troepolskiy provided us a
copy of a letter sent to REN-TV by the People's Congress of
Ingushetia, which also blamed "destructive forces aimed at
destabilizing the region" and promised a full investigation
under the control of President Zyazikov to bring the guilty
parties to justice. The letter added that this incident was
probably provoked by REN-TV's negative coverage of
Ingushetia, and concluded by asking that REN-TV cease its
"biased reports on events in the region."


10. (C) Memorial's Gregoriy Shvedov told us he believes that
federal forces carried out the attack, "based on the
professionalism of the operation and because the gunmen spoke
unaccented Russian," but that it was not clear who ordered
it. Shvedov linked the attack to the pending coverage of the
November 24 demonstrations and noted that the federal
authorities have a strong interest in preventing the
precedent of a local movement ousting an unpopular leader. If
federal forces were involved, Shvedov added, they would have
needed to coordinate with the local authorities to remove the
local security forces from their posts at the hotel. Shvedov
said that the immediate goal of not having the demonstration
or its dispersement televised had been met, and that with the
national focus on the Duma elections, it was unlikely that
the investigation would result in anything.


11. (C) Aleksey Simonov of the Glasnost Defense Foundation
told us that the abduction and beatings were not connected to
the local elections, but instead were aimed at preventing
Ingushetia "from becoming another Chechnya." Simonov noted
that the Congress of Ingush people scheduled for early 2008
is going to be held outside of the republic because they
cannot get permission to hold it inside the republic. He
added that the Kremlin was trying to create an information
vacuum about negative events in Ingushetia. Peter Orlov, NTV
news director, told us that all the news channels had been
warned by the authorities to "stay away from Ingushetia."

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Comment
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12. (C) This brazen and violent attack against Moscow-based
television journalists was certain to make national news.
The military style of the attack, and the existence of a
plausible motive strongly suggest involvement by local or
federal authorities, and possibly both. Pamfilova's public

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statements raised the profile of the case and her willingness
to head the investigation show both the seriousness with
which this attack is viewed and Pamfilova's skepticism about
the ability of the prosecutor general's to get to the bottom
of it.
BURNS