From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/2/2006 1:28 AM
April 01. 2006 5:31PM

U.S. Reporter in Russia Claims Harassment

By JUDITH INGRAM
Associated Press Writer

An American journalist said Saturday that interrogators alleging she has information about attacks in southern Russia have confiscated her notebooks, tapes and computer hard drives, threatened her and subjected her to long rounds of questioning.

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 and harassing her sources in Russia's restive North Caucasus region, which she began visiting in March 2005.

"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.

Regional Interior Ministry spokeswoman Anzhela Martirosova, who had said Friday that McEvers had been detained, said Saturday that she had no information about the matter.

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

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

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.
http://www.the-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060401/API/604010789