Editor jailed for his coverage of Chechnya

A Moscow journalist was sentenced to five years in prison Monday on charges of inciting ethnic hatred in reports about the conflict in Chechnya. Human rights activists and lawyers said the sentence for Boris Stomakhin, editor of Radikalnaya Politika, a Moscow-based monthly newspaper, was unprecedented in its severity. Stomakhin, who also contributed opinion articles to the rebel Kavkaz Centre web site, frequently called the presence of federal troops in Chechnya an ‘occupation,’ and compared President Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Stomakhin’s lawyer, Alexei Golubev, said he planned to appeal the ruling within 10 days, saying it hinged on a dubious linguistic analysis of the journalist’s articles. (The Moscow Times, November 21, 2006)

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>