From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 5/20/2006 12:07 AM
Basaev would get some fines...
This is a printout of an interview with Kavkaz Center's cooperator Mikael Storsjö in the Swedish Radio on Monday 15.6.2006. We publish this interview in its entity, as we find authentic information of what happened in Sweden a week ago to be of public interest for all our readers.
Reporter: We shall start our program with Chechnya - who is allowed to say what about the conflict there. Last Friday the International Prosecutor and the Criminal Investigation Police shut down a web server used by the Chechen resistance forces. The police also confiscated the servers. The reason for this action was announced to be that the web server, which has the name Kavkaz Center, is agitating for violence and acts of terror. The owner of the servers is the Swedish-speaking Finn Mikael Storsjö, an IT-entrepreneur, who now has filed a complaint to the Chancellor of Justice in Sweden against the actions of the prosecutor. Mikael Storsjö is here in our studio today, welcome.
Mikael Storsjö: Thank you.
R: Firstly, what is Kavkaz Center?
MS: It’s a web site which is published by a news agency, which reports news especially from Chechnya and generally from Caucasus.
R: From a Chechen view?
MS: Yes, it can be clearly stated that it’s from a Chechen so-called separatist view, and the reporting has strong Islamic components also.
R: It was started by one of the leaders of the separatist forces, Movladi Udugov, and they are also said to be Islamic, as you say. What is your opinion of these people?
MS: Well, it’s people who are striving for a free Chechnya. These people behind Kavkaz Center are using the pen as their weapon. They try to inform the world about what is happening in that area. We have to remember, that the information from Caucasus is very limited. The media policy in Russia is already on a general level very repressive, but regarding Caucasus we can speak about a hermetically closed area for foreign and independent journalists. In this situation Kavkaz Center is, maybe, the main breathing hole for information, the only news service that is able to lift the curtain a bit and tell the world what is happening there.
R: Before we continue, you are a Finnish IT entrepreneur, what is your role in this?
MS: My role is such, that when Kavkaz Center had problems in Lithuania and the secret police stopped their activities there, I offered my own equipment to their disposal, as I was an Internet provider.
R: Why?
MS: Well, I have had a great interest for Caucasus almost since my childhood, since I read Tolstoy’s novels about the area and started to understand what is happening over there. What is happening there today is exactly the same as we can read about in Tolstoy’s novels, for example Hadji Murat. I wanted to read information from this web site myself, and thus it was quite natural to help them in publishing it. I wanted to satisfy my own needs to read news from Chechnya.