(CJES/IFEX) – On 30 October 2006, in the city of Barnaul in Altay region, Sergey Teplyakov, head of the news department of “Altayskaya Pravda” (“The Altay Truth”) newspaper and reporter for “Izvestiya” newspaper, was summoned to the regional Federal Security Service (FSB) office. According to the Barnaul-based information agency Amic.ru, the journalist was questioned regarding […]
(CJES/IFEX) – On 30 October 2006, in the city of Barnaul in Altay region, Sergey Teplyakov, head of the news department of “Altayskaya Pravda” (“The Altay Truth”) newspaper and reporter for “Izvestiya” newspaper, was summoned to the regional Federal Security Service (FSB) office. According to the Barnaul-based information agency Amic.ru, the journalist was questioned regarding an interview he had conducted with the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London.
In the interview, the journalist had sought Berezovsky’s opinion on the 7 October killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya (see IFEX alerts of 10 October 2006). Amic.ru reports that Teplyakov was being trained in the offices of “Izvestiya” on the day of Politkovskaya’s murder, and on 9 October was assigned by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief to interview Berezovsky.
The Office of the State Prosecutor of the Russian Federation has taken issue with a number of the statements in Berezovsky’s interview, which they allege fall under the category of “appeals for violent change to the existing political system in Russia”. This was the formal reason that the Office of the State Prosecutor asked the FSB to initiate an investigation.
“I never thought that talking to Berezovsky would be considered a crime,” Teplyakov said to his colleagues in Amic.ru. The news agency has also reported that the FSB asked Teplyakov whether Berezovsky knows him personally, and how the journalist knew Berezovsky’s telephone numbers. The journalist explained that the numbers were given to him by the chief of the newspaper’s news department, Mr. Vladimir Demchenko, and that he had been told to seek Berezovsky’s opinions because in certain quarters it is believed that “the murder of the famous journalist is advantageous to some affluent oligarchs in that it might destabilize the situation in the country.” Teplyakov also explained to the FSB officers that he was not personally acquainted with Berezovsky and has no record of his conversation with him.
Teplyakov’s interview with Berezovsky was reprinted in many network media outlets. By some estimates, approximately 80 informational online sources reprinted the interview.