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Rights groups slam Russia 'cover-up' Wednesday, September 8, 2004 Posted: 1237 GMT (2037 HKT) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Human rights groups accused Moscow on Wednesday of initially hiding the truth about the Beslan hostage siege and said it took place against a backdrop of years of rights abuses by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. A statement from eight international and Russian rights groups began, however, with "unreserved" condemnation of Chechen separatists who held more than 1,000 children and parents. It urged President Vladimir Putin's government to guard against vigilante reprisal attacks. Amnesty International, which released the statement in London, said it had been delayed during mourning out of respect for the at least 326 who died in the siege. "This abhorrent and calculated action by an armed group on a school displays a callous disregard for civilian life," the groups said. "Our organizations denounce this act unreservedly." But the groups, which include Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and several leading Russian rights groups, also sought to turn the focus on Russia's hard-line Chechnya policy since Putin sent troops back there as prime minister in 1999. "The Beslan attack took place against a backdrop of five years of widespread, persistent and largely unpunished human rights violations by Russian troops against civilians in Chechnya as well as egregious human rights abuses by rebel fighters," it said. "The impunity for such abuses has served to perpetuate the conflict and has led to serious human rights atrocities committed by both sides. In our opinion, lasting peace in Chechnya cannot be achieved without justice for all victims of human rights abuses committed in the context of the conflict." The groups accused the authorities of initially "covering up the extent of the crisis" in Beslan by playing down the number of hostages. Officials initially said there were only 350 hostages. A probe should include "an investigation into the way in which the authorities released information, both to the public and to the families of the hostages," they said. The groups also expressed concern that the Beslan deaths might spark revenge killings. "We remind the Russian government of its positive obligation to protect civilians at risk of spontaneous reprisal attacks in North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and other Russian regions." Foreign Journalist Drugged by Russians in Beslan Created: 10.09.2004 16:14 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:14 MSK, MosNews A Georgian journalist detained last week in south Russia at the site of the Beslan school siege was drugged by the authorities, a medical expert has said. Ms Nana Lezhava and another journalist from Georgia's independent Rustavi-2 television were detained Friday on accusations they had violated visa rules and were prevented from covering the aftermath of the hostage-taking. The head of the oversight board at a Georgian drug research institute told a news conference Thursday that urine samples taken from Lezhava showed traces of tranquilizers, the Associated Press reported. He said he suspects the journalist was drugged by the Russian authorities. 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. The tests were conducted at the request of Rustavi-2, which aired an interview with the journalist Wednesday in which she said that after drinking coffee in a holding cell, she slept for 24 hours and woke up feeling weak. Both journalists were later released and returned to neighboring Georgia. The incident led watchdogs to speculate that journalists were being deliberately poisoned by Russian authorities to prevent them from covering major terror attacks. As MosNews reported earlier, prominent Russian journalist and critic of the government's military campaign in Chechnya Anna Politkovskaya fell seriously ill after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia. Russian Journalist: FSB Wanted to Kill Me Created: 10.09.2004 20:17 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 20:17 MSK, 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. Moscow Police Beat Up Cosmonaut in Racist Attack Created: 10.09.2004 12:01 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:14 MSK, MosNews Two Moscow policemen beat up a Russian cosmonaut who had a "Chechen" surname, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported on Friday. The incident took place near the Vykhino metro station in south-east Moscow on Thursday night. Colonel Magomed Tolboyev was stopped by two police sergeants for a routine document check. After the law enforcers saw the colonel's name, which suggests he is of Caucasian Muslim descent, they started beating him up. The beating stopped only after passers-by called the police station. Before leaving the attackers said: "Get away from here, you black, and tell your kinsmen we will strangle all of you, whatever the cost." Colonel Magomed Tolboyev is a distinguished test pilot; he bears the country's top honorary title Hero of Russia. During his space career Tolboyev was commander of Russia's first and only space shuttle — the Buran. In his comments to the Ekho Moskvy radio station Tolboyev said that he will not bring the case to court as this was below his moral principles. "I am an officer of the Russian Air Force, I do not want to sue this scum," he said. "Apart from that, there are tens of thousands of them, nothing can be done anyway," he added. "I could shake these sergeants off me in a second, but I understood that in this case they would have claimed that I had attacked them first. That is why I only asked them not to hit me on the back — I once fell from high altitude, my whole spine is made of plastic now," the colonel said. What must be strengthened is not the security measures against the citizens, but the internal security of the law enforcement bodies so that they are more civilized. On Friday morning, an official spokesman of the Interior Ministry's directorate for Moscow City said that the interior security department had launched a probe into the incident and promised that the results of the probe would be made public.