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RUSSIA: EDITOR JAILED FOR HIS COVERAGE OF CHECHNYA November 21, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) 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. "Putting people in prison for words is unfathomable. Some get less prison time for murder," said Boris Timoshenko, head of the monitoring center at the Glasnost Protection Foundation.
Seven people charged in connection with the 2004 killing of a Tajik girl in St. Petersburg were acquitted of murder charges and received prison terms ranging from 1 1/2 years to 5 1/2 years. The Supreme Court this year upheld their relatively light prison sentences and hooliganism convictions.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Monday's ruling and expressed hope that it would be overturned. "We are seeing fewer and fewer journalists who can provide reliable and truthful reporting on Chechnya," she said.
Stomakhin, who also contributed opinion articles to the rebel Kavkaz Center 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. Stomakhin maintained his innocence Monday, saying he was "tried for his views and not for any real crime."
Timoshenko of the Glasnost Protection Foundation said he could not understand why the written word had inspired such a harsh prison sentence, while the authorities do not seem to respond similarly to racially motivated violence.
Four dark-skinned foreigners have been killed and dozens of others attacked in St. Petersburg this year, including an Indian medical student and an Uzbek man who were fatally stabbed in September and July, respectively. Students from Africa in St. Petersburg and an Armenian teenager in the Moscow region also died this year in apparent hate crimes.