(CJES/IFEX) – On 3 May 2006, a police patrol stopped a taxi that was transporting Fatima Tlisova, REGNUM news agency’s chief editor for the North Caucasus. The incident occurred on the Cherkessk-Mineralniye Vodi highway, at a checkpoint near Suvorovskaya stanitsa. The journalist was travelling from Cherkessk to Nalchik for business-related purposes. She told CJES that […]
(CJES/IFEX) – On 3 May 2006, a police patrol stopped a taxi that was transporting Fatima Tlisova, REGNUM news agency’s chief editor for the North Caucasus. The incident occurred on the Cherkessk-Mineralniye Vodi highway, at a checkpoint near Suvorovskaya stanitsa. The journalist was travelling from Cherkessk to Nalchik for business-related purposes. She told CJES that a policeman, who did not identify himself, checked the vehicle and the driver’s documents and then asked Tlisova to present her papers. She showed her passport and a journalist identification card. The policeman took away the passport and ordered her to take her personal effects with her and go to a police building for a personal search.
“At the [police] premises I asked him why I should be searched, were there any legal grounds to do that? I was told that I was being detained for a personal search and inspection of my possessions,” Tlisova told a CJES representative. When the journalist refused to go through this humiliating procedure, stating that she was aware of her rights, a policewoman who also did not identify herself, replied: “If you refuse to voluntarily submit to a search, then the search will be conducted without your consent.”
“I then demanded the presence of witnesses, fearing that something, for example drugs or bullets, could be planted in my bag. The policewoman went out to the road, stopped a bus and asked two women to get out. The search was then conducted in their presence,” specified the journalist.
The only explanation she received from the police officer was that the police were conducting an antiterrorist operation and inspecting suspicious individuals. “To my question – why did I seem suspicious to them – I did not get an answer,” stated Tlisova.
After nothing was found in her possessions, Tlisova asked the police to draw up a report on the search. She took a copy of the report with her.
The journalist told CJES that when she left the police post and was getting into her car, the policeman who had detained her ran out of the police building, approached her and said: “I, in the presence of a witness, i.e. the driver, bring an official apology to you.”
Tlisova considers this incident an act of intimidation and pressure.
The journalist actively cooperates with the Associated Press information agency, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Russian independent newspaper “Novaya gazeta”. In the journalist’s opinion, the authorities are trying to intimidate not only her, because she has been openly expressing her point of view on events that are happening in the Caucasus, but also other journalists working in this volatile region.
Following the incident, the REGNUM news agency management and editorial team sent an open letter to the office of the Prosecutor General, asking for an investigation of Tlisova’s ongoing harassment. The letter asks the prosecutor’s office if this latest incident was directed against Tlisova as a journalist, or against the entire news agency.
CJES has previously reported on past incidents of harassment of Tlisova (see IFEX alerts of 1 May 2006 and 16 June 2005).
See: http://ifex.org/en/content/view/full/74119/
and http://ifex.org/en/content/view/full/67422
