Another Russian journalist dead - "fell to death"

Quote:

Kommersant devoted a page of tributes to its dead colleague in its edition today.

The problem was highlighted last October by the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative reporter whose revelations of human rights abuses in Chechnya irritated the Kremlin. Her murder remains unsolved.

He apparently fell from a fifth-floor window.

Although there were no signs of foul play, his colleagues refuse to believe he committed suicide and the Moscow prosecutor's office has started a criminal investigation into possible "incitement to suicide". Kommersant disclosed yesterday that shortly before his death he had been working on an investigation whose findings would have caused an international scandal if proved.

Ilya Bulavinov, the newspaper's deputy editor, said he could not rule out the possibility that his death may have been linked to his work. The paper revealed that the journalist had been warned by the FSB security service not to publish the results of his investigation. If he went ahead, he was apparently told he would be charged with divulging state secrets. His colleagues say he had decided to play it safe and sit on the story.

The article, which was not published, claimed that Russia was negotiating to sell fighter jets and sophisticated surface-to-surface missiles to Syria and surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Safronov believed the arms shipments would be covertly routed via Belarus to allow Moscow to avoid Western allegations that it supported "rogue" states.

Did he jump or was he pushed?



Russian journalists fear worst after another death


Safety fears heightened by mystery plunge of man known for damaging scoops

Tom Parfitt and Luke Harding in Moscow
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian


It's a setting repeated a thousand times over in the great sprawl of sagging apartment blocks that make up Moscow's suburbs. Entrance number two at 9 Nizhegorodskaya Street looks out on to a courtyard where children play on swings and a climbing frame, still encrusted with snow.
Only up close do you see the pile of carnations lying on a bench by the door. And only then do you look up to the gaping window between the fourth and fifth floors from which Ivan Safronov, 51, either jumped or was pushed on March 2.

Safronov's death lacks the grim evidence of assassination that ended the life of Anna Politkovskaya.
This week doctors said Safronov's corpse - discovered on the doorstep at 4pm - showed no signs of violence beside those consistent with a heavy fall. The waist-high windowsill from which he dropped was marked with a footprint, suggesting he had climbed up himself.

But Safronov's friends and family cannot believe he lost the will to live. They think he may have been pushed or even fed mind-altering drugs that made him suicidal.

In the weeks before his death the married father-of-two told friends he had uncovered sensitive information about Russian arms sales to the Middle East that could have damaged senior officials, making him a potential target for retribution.

Safronov's colleagues at the Kommersant daily newspaper say he was far from suicidal.

"We all knew him as a cheerful, contented person who had no reason to end his life," said Sergei Dyupin, a Kommersant reporter who is investigating the death.

A former army colonel, Safronov had a reputation for damaging scoops about the military. Shortly before his death he informed his editors that he planned to file a story on the sale of Iskander surface-to-surface missiles and SU-30 fighters to Syria, and S-300 air defence systems to Iran. He told colleagues he had been warned a security service (FSB) investigation would follow.

Prosecutors are now investigating whether Safronov's death was a "provoked suicide" and yesterday confirmed they have ordered a forensic examination to establish whether his body contained "toxic agents".

Several witnesses who spoke to Safronov on his mobile phone in the two days before his death have reported that he was behaving uncharacteristically.

Drugs theory

Dyupin admits the drug theory belongs "among the exotic" but insists there is enough evidence to raise suspicion. "We phoned around the people on the call register of his mobile for the last two days of his life and many of them said he was not his usual self when they talked to him," he told the Guardian. "He sounded sleepy, depressed or as if he was drugged."

A doctor who was treating Safronov for ulcers has confirmed his medicine could not have caused such side effects. An old friend of the reporter, Vyacheslav Davydenko, who called Safronov on the evening before his death, noted that his voice was "strange". "Ivan spoke to me as if with another person," he said.

Some members of Moscow's rattled journalistic community have already latched on to the drug theory. An autopsy was carried out before Safronov's burial on Wednesday, with results expected soon. "Very probably poisons or psycho-tropic substances were found in his blood," said Boris Timoshenko, a spokesman for Glasnost Foundation, the press freedom watchdog.

There was anger yesterday that prosecutors have focused their energies on suicide as the most likely cause of death. "We'd like the investigators not to dwell only on the suicide theory ... but to check all the other theories too," Kommersant deputy editor Ilya Bulavinov told reporters.

Yet the circumstances of the death remain riddled with inconsistencies.

Safronov lived on the third floor of his five-storey Khrushchev-era apartment block but fell from the stairwell window a floor and a half above, meaning he either climbed or was forced upstairs.

A bag of oranges that he had bought lay spilled in the stairwell, yet there were no signs of a struggle on his body or the window frame. Walking up the stairs, you realise how difficult it would have been to manhandle a bulky ex-soldier over the edge. Also strange is that Safronov dropped from about 13 metres (43ft) - surprisingly low for someone hoping to cause death; be it suicide or murder.

Despite the uncertainties, some observers, including Mr Timoshenko, are convinced they know what happened. He said he was "almost certain" that Safranov's investigations into the Russian defence establishment had led to his death. "The methods of killing journalists have changed," he said. "In the past they were shot. Now there are new technologies."