Politkovskaya family lawyer ill, possibly poisoned

From the website for The Committee to Protect Journalists: FRANCE/RUSSIA: Politkovskaya family lawyer ill, possibly poisoned New York, October 14, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the welfare of Russian lawyer Karinna Moskalenko, who represents the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Moskalenko was the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg, France, days before she was due to appear in a Moscow court for pretrial proceedings for three suspects charged in Politkovskaya’s October 2006 slaying, news reports said. “We are shocked by this apparent attempt to intimidate Karinna Moskalenko,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. “We wish Moskalenko and her family a speedy recovery, and we call on French and Russian authorities to investigate the matter thoroughly.” Moskalenko was sickened by a mercury-like substance she found beneath the rugs of her car on Sunday morning, according to Sergei Sokolov, Novaya Gazeta’s deputy editor-in-chief. French police opened a criminal investigation but have not commented publicly, Agence France-Presse reported. Investigators were working to identify the substance, which the Moskalenkos found because the car’s rugs were not fitting properly, according to Russian press reports. Moskalenko had felt weak for several days, suffering nausea, coughing, swelling, and headaches, according to Russian press reports. The lawyer, who lives part-time in Strasbourg with her husband and three children because of her frequent appearances before the European Court of Human Rights, told the independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy, that her children suffered similar symptoms. Sokolov, who is in contact with the lawyer, said Moskalenko and her family were examined by doctors in Strasbourg today and were told they would recover. Doctors did not publicly disclose a diagnosis, but the lawyer said she believed the illnesses were tied to the substance, news reports said. Sokolov said lingering illness would preclude Moskalenko from traveling to Moscow for Wednesday’s scheduled opening of the Politkovskaya murder proceedings. A preliminary hearing in the case against Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer with the Moscow Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, and brothers Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov is due to start on Wednesday in Moscow District Military Court, Sokolov said. He said Politkovskaya’s son, Ilya, and defense lawyer Anna Stavitskaya are expected to seek a postponement because of the Strasbourg incident. The preliminary hearing is significant. Sokolov told CPJ that the hearing would determine whether the case would be heard by a jury or a judge; if the defendants would be held in custody during the proceedings; and whether the trial would be open to the public. Novaya Gazeta and CPJ have called for the proceedings to be open. Sokolov told CPJ that the motive for the apparent poisoning is unclear. Moskalenko has been involved in a number of sensitive cases. Her clients include Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of oil conglomerate Yukos; Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion turned opposition leader, dissident Aleksandr Litvinenko, who was slained in London in 2006; and the relatives of slain journalist Dmitry Kholodov, who was murdered in October 1994. Moskalenko and her team of lawyers at the Moscow-based International Protection Center have won 27 cases before the European Court of Human Rights and have more than a 100 cases pending, according to the Russian independent news Web site Gazeta. She has represented families of torture victims in Chechnya, as well as relatives of victims of the 2002 Nord-Ost theater hostage crisis in Moscow and the 2004 school hostage crisis in Beslan, according to Russian press reports. © 2008 Committee to Protect Journalists. http://www.cpj.org E-mail: info@cpj.org

Russia's Scorched Earth Policy in Georgia

See "Book Burning" post below, for it is certainly related. From The Wall Street Journal SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 What the Russians Left In Their Wake in Georgia By MELIK KAYLAN Having devastated vast areas of its own lands in the Caucasus, such as Chechnya and Ingushetia, in order to "protect" them from instability, Moscow's obliterating shadow has settled deep over Georgia -- with the usual consequences. The full barbarism of Russian actions in Georgia may not emerge for years; much of the evidence lies behind the lines in terrain newly annexed by Russia. But some details are now beyond dispute. Alongside the various human atrocities, such as the bombing and purging of civilian areas, the invaders looted and destroyed numerous historical sites, some of which were profoundly revered by the Georgians as sacred building blocks in their national identity. This is especially true of the region around South Ossetia that served as a kind of cradle of early Georgian culture. The Georgian Ministry of Culture lists some 500 monuments and archaeological sites now mostly under Russian occupation and out of sight. After the interminable Soviet decades, the Georgians from 1990 onward made a special push nationwide to reconsecrate churches and build local museums to revive their own interrupted national narrative. No doubt that in itself acted as a kind of provocation to Russia's hair-trigger sensitivities over loss of empire. Using satellite imagery and interviews with refugees from the August invasion, the Georgian government is in the process of identifying damage to the most important monuments. Thus far the destruction includes severe bomb damage to the Museum of Prince Matchabelli, which housed the personal effects of the Georgian royal family's famed anti-Russian rebel, who was native to the region; destruction by arson of the church of St. George in Sveri, a rare 19th-century wooden structure; shelling damage to the 12th-century Ikorta church with its graves of revered Georgians; and extensive bomb damage to the monastery complex of Nikozi Church -- dating from the 11th century, it is perhaps the most important site of all. This is an extremely selective list, but it gives the reader an idea of why the area matters deeply to Georgians, and in a perverse way to Russian-backed militias allowed to plunder as they drove out residents at gunpoint and, according to eyewitness accounts, began looting buildings. Satellite imagery shows that specifically Georgian villages were extensively torched and in some places are being bulldozed flat. Here one should firmly scotch any budding moral equivalency arguments comparing Russian conduct in Georgia with allied conduct in Iraq or Kosovo. Whatever other mistakes have been made, the U.S. has meticulously avoided bomb damage to ancient sites and never has encouraged any allies to attack or obliterate the culture of rivals. To be clear, the U.S. simply does not harbor that kind of targeted animus toward the cultural patrimony of others. I was in the Georgian war zone during a chunk of August and with the help of local friends I was able to traverse occupied terrain via country roads and over hills on foot -- a highly dodgy undertaking as one moved into South Ossetia without Russian permits. Georgian refugees were still streaming out. Bodies and burned vehicles were left behind. To view the damage to Nikozi, my friends got me to a hillside at dusk for a short spell, before it got dark enough for night-vision lenses to pick us out, making it suicidal for us to move around. One could make out rubble and destruction in the village and the church complex. The church itself seemed unharmed, but the equally historic bishop's palace nearby appeared roofless and fire-damaged. In the advancing twilight, visibility was bad. But what I saw has now been confirmed by multiple eyewitness and other reports. The site of Nikozi Church dates back to the fifth century and is known to Georgians as the Church of the First Martyr. The story goes that St. Rajdeny was a Persian soldier of high rank stationed in the area under the Sassanid empire. He converted to Christianity and was tortured to reconvert to Zoroastrianism. He refused and died under torture, and his grave became a center of pilgrimage around which a church was built by Vakhtang Gorgaseli, the fifth-century Georgian king who founded Tblisi. A bishop's palace was added and the church rebuilt in the 11th century. The Soviets expunged all religious activity there with particular force because Stalin hailed from the nearby town of Gori, where they built the Stalin museum in his lifetime. At the Soviets' demise, Nikozi became again a center of pilgrimage for Georgians. And as the national church came back to life, Nikozi reacquired a bishop who revived the annual mid-August festivities in honor of St. Rajdeny. The fiercest aerial bombardment of the village took place this year on Aug. 12 and 14. Bishop Andrea Gvazava of Gori, who was helping conduct services at the church at the time, later told me that he had organized the evacuation of villagers but the bishop of Nikozi had stayed to face further bombing. There is some confusion over the condition of the church -- some say it sustained some fire damage and little else -- but the medieval bishop's palace was gutted and everything inside torched. New outbuildings to house a school were destroyed. Bishop Andrea believes that the complex likely suffered looting, because in Gori and outlying villages he and other priests were later robbed at gunpoint by Ossetian militias. In contrast, Stalin's museum in Gori, which I visited during the occupation, went unmolested except for the Georgian flag flying on the tower above -- a sniper had shot out its red St. George crosses. In fact, the museum became a center of pilgrimage for Russian soldiers who daily stood around having their pictures taken. The custodian, a sturdy elderly lady, also had refused to flee. She told me that teary-eyed Russian officers, drunk by evening as most Russian soldiers were, kept turning up and complimenting her for watching the place. They had hugged her and said: "He was a great man. He kept our country unified." Had they mentioned that he'd done so by decimating an entire generation of Georgians and by settling Ossetians in and around Tskhinvali, the source of all the present trouble? "They were alcoholics," she sniffed. Why hadn't she fled? "Because it is a piece of history, whatever you think of Stalin," she said, "and we have a responsibility to preserve it." Mr. Kaylan writes about culture for the Journal.

Ingushetia Web Site Owner Killed by Russian Police

Another way to get rid of all opposition - label them "terrorists." The true terrorists are running things from the Kremlin. Hey, Kirsan, real safe region you chose to hold the Women's World Chess Championship in! Story from Theage.com.au Russian police kill anti-government website owner September 1, 2008 The owner of an independent website critical of authorities was shot and killed by police today in a volatile province in southern Russia, his colleague said. The killing of Ingushetiya.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev could incite tensions in the province of Ingushetia west of Chechnya, which has been the site of frequent attacks on police and other officials. Police arrested Yevloyev today, taking him off a plane that had just landed in Ingushetia province near Chechnya, said the site's deputy editor, Ruslan Khautiyev. Police whisked Yevloyev away in a car and later dumped him on the road with a gunshot wound in the head, Khautiyev said. He said Yevloyev died in a hospital shortly afterward. In Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement that Yevloyev was detained by police and died in an "incident" while being taken to police headquarters for an interrogation. Markin did not elaborate, saying a check to clarify the circumstances of Yevloyev's death had begun. The committee is under the Prosecutor-General's office. Yevloyev has angered regional authorities with bold criticism of police treatment of civilians in the region. A court in June ordered him to shut his site on charges of spreading "extremist" statements, but it reappeared under a different name. Khautiyev said Yevloyev arrived in Ingushetia from Moscow on the same plane with regional president Murat Zyazikov. Police blocked the jet on the runway after it landed in Ingushetia's provincial capital, Magas, entered the plane and took Yevloyev out. Yevloyev's death is likely to further stir up passions in Ingushetia, which has been plagued by frequent raids and ambushes against federal forces and local authorities. Government critics attribute the attacks to anger fuelled by abductions, beatings, unlawful arrests and killings of suspects by government forces and local allied paramilitaries. In June, Human Rights Watch accused Russian security forces of widespread human rights abuses in Ingushetia, saying it has documented dozens of summary and arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. It said officials in Ingushetia persecuted peaceful Muslims and government critics, marginalised opposition groups and stifled independent media. The New York-based rights group warned that the "dirty war" tactics against insurgents would likely further destabilise the situation in Ingushetia and beyond in the North Caucasus. Many in Ingushetia are intensely unhappy with Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and a close ally of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. An anti-government rally in Ingushetia in January drew hundreds of people who clashed with police. Immediately after Yevloyev's detention, his website urged Ingushetia's residents to gather outside the headquarters of a leading opposition group. AP

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Coverage of the story from The Wall Street Journal:

A Muckraker's Slaying Leaves Russian Province Fearing Crackdown By ALAN CULLISONSeptember 1, 2008; Page A20

MOSCOW -- For months, the owner of a muckraking news Web site had stayed away from his home after receiving warnings to tone down his critique of Kremlin-backed authorities in the Russian province of Ingushetia, friends said.

But Magomed Yevloyev finally boarded a plane to return to Ingushetia this week, and there he encountered a surprise: The local governor was riding on the same plane, a few seats away from him in business class.

When the plane landed in Ingushetia, the governor was met by a Mercedes that whisked him away. And Mr. Yevloyev was arrested at the airport, deposited into a jeep and shot in the head. Local authorities say the killing was an accident.

Mr. Yevloyev's killing Sunday shocked the southern region of Ingushetia, where the local opponents of the Kremlin are already anxious because of years of kidnappings and violence that they blame on federal authorities. Now, with Russia projecting its might outside its borders with its military foray into Georgia, fears abound that the Kremlin's rule within Russia, and specifically in the restless North Caucasus, could get tougher.

Authorities say Mr. Yevloyev was shot in the head during a struggle, after he tried to grab a policeman's gun as they were bringing him to the local capital to be questioned about a bombing there.

The governor, Murat Zyazikov, issued a statement promising an investigation. "I personally didn't know him," Mr. Zyazikov said. "I think in this case what we're talking about is a human tragedy."

Over the past four years, Mr. Yevloyev had turned his Web site, Ingushetiya.ru, into the main source for news in Ingushetia, a predominantly Muslim province bordering on war-ravaged Chechnya. Mr. Yevloyev had emerged as a vociferous critic of Mr. Zyazikov, a security-service veteran. Mr. Yevloyev charged that Russia's FSB, the successor to the KGB, was operating with impunity in Ingushetia, rubbing out opposition members with hit squads that carried out extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Yevloyev's death casts a spotlight on a region where ethnic strife and brutal crackdowns by security services remain the norm despite Russia's claims that it has subdued Islamic separatists in Chechnya. Hundreds of demonstrators marched Monday in the Ingush capital to protest what they called his murder, demanding the ouster of the governor, Russian news agencies reported.

In an interview last year, Mr. Yevloyev said he started the news service as a hobby, when he worked in Ingushetia's prosecutor's office and began posting news items on a Web page. Mr. Yevloyev often gathered his real-time reports of firefights, killings and arrests from freelance contributors and residents who phoned in, and he carried with him four mobile phones to support the service. One mobile phone was for text messages, a second was for socializing, and a third was for business, he said. The fourth mobile phone, he said, was for "special friends."

Mr. Yevloyev claimed that some of his Web site's reports derailed some official abuses before they could come to fruition. In 2006, he said, contributors helped him document how Russian federal authorities had sent a special "liquidator" squad to Ingushetia that was preparing to assassinate people who had been identified as insurgents. The squad left Ingushetia, he said, after his Web site posted several items about its movements.

Ingushetia also been a hotbed for separatism. In June, Human Rights Watch accused Russian security forces of widespread abuses in the region against local Muslim groups as well as opposition activists and media. The group said it documented dozens of summary and arbitrary detentions, acts of torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.

Mr. Yevloyev's Web site was a chronicler of many of the alleged abuses. The government tried to shut it down by labeling it as "extremist" under Russia's toughened antiterror laws.

Last year, Mr. Yevloyev's site focused on Russia's parliamentary elections and accused the governor of overseeing vote fraud to curry favor with the Kremlin. The site posted observers at polling stations who estimated that turnout was about 8% -- far below the official tally of the regional government, which said that 98% voted overwhelmingly for the Kremlin-backed party.

The next week, the governor told a Russian magazine that the election-fraud allegations were "nonsense." He played down the kidnappings and killings, saying they only got attention because of an information war being waged against his administration by "those who want to weaken Russia."

With pressure rising this year, especially after a court ruled the site extremist, Mr. Yevloyev had stayed away from Ingushetia, according to his lawyer, Kaloy Akhilgov.

Mr. Akhilgov he said he spoke to Mr. Yevloyev by phone Saturday night, trying dissuade him from returning to Ingushetia. "I told him not to go there, that anything could happen to you," he said. "He said he wasn't a coward, and that his parents were there and his brother and sister and needed to see them." Aboard the flight to Ingushetia, Mr. Yevloyev and the governor didn't speak to one another, said Vasily Likhachev, a member of Russia's parliament from Ingushetia who spoke to Mr. Zyazikov on Monday. Mr. Zyazikov and Mr. Yevloyev "did indeed fly together on the same plane, but there were no arguments or any kind of conversation between them," he told the Interfax news agency.

An entourage of friends were awaiting Mr. Yevloyev at the airport in Ingushetia. The governor got off first, and was whisked away in a Mercedes, said Magomed Khazbiyev, a personal friend of Mr. Yevloyev and a leader of opposition to the local government. Then Mr. Yevloyev was escorted to an armored jeep of Russia's Interior Ministry, he said. A short time later, he turned up at a local hospital with a single bullet wound through the head, he said.

Mr. Khazbiyev said that Mr. Yevloyev was in police custody for 20 minutes at most.

Russian Hackers Attacking Kasparov Website

The Putin Russians - what a bunch of juvenile assholes. They need to be spanked and set to bed without their supper. From Associated Press/Google Russian hackers continue attacks on Georgian sites By PETER SVENSSON – 8 hours ago NEW YORK (AP) — Attacks by Russian hackers against Georgian Web sites, including one hosted in the United States, continued Tuesday even as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to hostilities against Georgia. Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based Web-hosting firm Tulip Systems Inc., said the Web site of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia aiming to overwhelm the site. Burling said bogus traffic outnumbered legitimate traffic 5000 to 1 at president.gov.ge. "Literally, our people aren't getting any sleep," Burling said. Tulip's firewall was blocking most of the malicious traffic. The site has been periodically inaccessible, though it was working midday Tuesday. Burling said the attacks have been reported to the FBI. The site was transferred from servers in Georgia, the small nation south of Russia, on Saturday. Georgian-born Nino Doijashvili, Tulip's chief executive and founder, happened to be in the country on vacation when fighting broke out Thursday. Doijashvili offered help to the government when it became apparent that Russian hackers were getting the upper hand, shutting down several government and news sites. The U.S.-based Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks Internet attacks, said they had noticed commands to attack Georgian sites being issued over the weekend to "botnets," or networks of computers that have been surreptitiously subverted by hackers. The computers are used to send bogus traffic to targeted sites, slowing them or in some cases bringing them down. The same botnets are also targeting Russian news sites and the Web site of Gary Kasparov, the Russian chess player and political activist, according to Steven Adair at Shadowserver. On Monday, hackers took over the Web site of Georgia's parliament and replaced it with an image that drew parallels between Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler, Adair said.

Russian Terrorism Comes Out in the Open

Russia's unprovked attacks on civilians in Georgia shows just what kind of barbarians they are. Under the excuse of "protecting" Russian citizens - all of whom became so by fiat when Russia decided to side with a separatist movement in South Ossetia in Georgia - Russia sent tanks and troops into Georgia and has bombed both civilian and military targets far away from the alleged site of conflict in South Ossetia. And - get this - they're saying it's all the fault of the USA. Talk about bullshit! But you see what has happened - Bush has so weakened our military strength by bogging us down in "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan (we should have been out of both places years ago) that we cannot adequately mount a military response to the Russian terrorists. Putin and his puppets are thumbing their noses at us and killing Georgian civilians with impunity. And we can't do a damn thing about it. Welcome to the new world order.