N.Y. journalist says interrogation aimed at harassing her sources

The Associated Press, Apr. 1, 2006

MOSCOW

Alleging she has information about attacks in southern Russia, interrogators have confiscated an American journalist's notebooks, tapes and computer hard drives, threatened and subjected her to long rounds of questioning for three days.

Kelly McEvers, a 35-year-old New York-based freelance journalist, arrived in the southern region of Dagestan two weeks ago to research the impact of Islamic extremism. She said Saturday that her interrogators' aim appeared to be identifying all her sources throughout Russia's restive North Caucasus region, which she began visiting in March 2005, and harassing them.

"It seems like past history would show that people who talk to journalists can be punished for that, at the very least go under surveillance," McEvers told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from an apartment in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala, where she was expecting police interrogators to pick her up for another round of questioning.

"It's obvious that this is another way for them to keep the world from knowing what's really going on down here," she said. "Their end goal is just to scare the hell out of me and make it so I never come back again."

McEvers said she had been detained for questioning for 10 hours on Wednesday, six hours Thursday, and 10 hours Friday.

She was told to return to the regional Interior Ministry headquarters on Saturday, but said in a separate telephone call Saturday evening that while her interpreter had been questioned for an hour or so, she was not subjected to another interrogation. However, she was left in the dark about her status and was not told she was free to leave Makhachkala.

During the most recent interrogation, which was joined by a prosecutor from Chechnya, "they threatened to take me to Chechnya if I didn't cooperate," she said.

"They say I have information about acts of violence, which is totally and completely bogus, of course," she said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said interrogators had threatened McEvers with involvement in terrorist activity since she allegedly had information about a 2005 ambush of a Russian military convoy in the Nozhai-Yurt district of Chechnya, near the Dagestani border.

"They play tapes of phone conversations and accuse me of trying to meet with extremists, they've read through my notes and ask me totally absurd questions like 'Am I a weapons expert?'" she said. "They refuse to say what's the next step and what they're going to do with me."

The interrogators have let her return to a private apartment each night to sleep, but during the day she was their prisoner _ unable to use a phone, unable to contact the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, intimidated by tough-looking men.

She said the Chechen prosecutor was the first in three days to indicate on what basis she was being interrogated.

"Before him it was just goons, for hours and hours not telling me who they are, what I'm charged with," she said. "When I start asking questions a door opens and a bunch of tough guys come in."

McEvers, who is on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said she had been interviewing students, imams, villagers and others about developments in Dagestan, which she called the "most Muslim" republic in southern Russia.

"What's interesting down here is that this is one of the few places where there's a moderate dialogue going on about extremism," she said. "The streets are packed on Fridays with (Muslim) people going to prayers, and there are so many people of faith here that they want to live in peace."

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