Bollettino

From the Figaro:

“The story resembles a bad film, but it happened, and it is disquieting for the fate of Russian journalism. Wednesday, attempting to go to North Ossetia by airplane, two famous reporters who have continued to cover the fighting against Chechnya independently could not land. This was because of an “aggression’ organized against them by alien muscovite forces. The first, Anna Politkovskaia, is well known for her courage and her pleas against the war in Chechnya.
She has served before as a meditator in the hostage taking in Moscov, October 2002. However this time, this was not possible. For Anna Politkovskaia was poined in the airplane that took her to the North Caucasus, after having drunk some tea. Falling violently ill, she was hospitalized at Rostov, then repatriated to Moscow. The form of the intoxication alerted her paper – the editor in chief of said paper, the Chekotchikhine journal, having been killed by a poison.

The fate of Andrei Babitski is also unclear. This Radio Liberty journalist was stopped by the police at the airport under the pretext that dogs had smelt a suspect odor in his baggage. As he tried, nevertheless, to board the plane, he was attacked by two individuals while a guardsman intervened. With the result that Babitski was accused of hooliganism and is now under provisional arrest. Yesterday, a court condemned him to five days of imprisonment. Why?”

Anna Politkovskaia's book of reportages from Chechnya was one of the best LI has read so far. One wonders: what is happening?