Tuesday, August 16, 2005

I found out about it at one journalist's Russian-language LiveJournal, and I'm not sure if many peole have noticed, either here, or in the States, that the Russians did strike back after having been humiliated by Babitsky and the ABC:

The state-run news agency RIA-Novosti interviewed Abdullah al-Jenabi, leader of the largest anti-American armed group in Iraq, Jaish al-Mujahideen. In the interview, among other things, al-Jenabi warned that his group was planning multiple attacks on the occupational forces and their allies in the nearest future.

After the interview had been published, six Iraqi security officers raided the RIA-Novosti office in Baghdad and seized some CDs and tapes. The search was sanctioned by the Iraqi Interior and Justice Ministries.

But they didn't ban the news agency.

The link to last week's Moscow News story about it is here; a Kommersant article is here.

***

The same journalist wrote this (in Russian) about the ABC's interview with Basaev:

My reaction to Basaev's interview on ABC is far from being simple. I could've understood it before, but after Nord-Ost and, especially, after Beslan... It's strange. After the United States have put him on the terrorists' list... Or have I been brainwashed, too, and don't understand something? If you look at it not formally but as a human being with conscience, I think that if they were itching so badly to air this interview, they should've followed it up with an interview of a mother who lost a child in Beslan, or whose child was maimed. Or give word to a child who had to drink his own urine - he also has the right to say what he thinks about it after they had messed up his life so violently. Aren't we learning principles of democratic journalism from Americans? And the main one of these principles is to let both sides speak. And the other side in this case, I think, isn't the Russian Embassy, it's not Lavrov and Ivanov - they are bureaucrats and everyone knows what they have to say. The other side here is those who had to face the terrorists. [...]

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