rom: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 3/12/2007 1:30 AM
The Boston Globe
GLOBE EDITORIAL
A convenient suicide in Russia

March 12, 2007

IF THERE were no precedents for the suspicious death of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, it might be easier to believe his fall from a fifth-floor window March 2 was the suicide officials initially said it was. But too many other journalists working on sensitive stories have met violent ends in Russia. Safronov, military correspondent for the daily Kommersant, had told colleagues he was about to file a story on Russian sales of advanced missiles and fighter jets to Syria and Iran, transactions that were to be routed through Belarus to give the Kremlin deniability.

These weapons deals raise grave questions about the geopolitical role the government of President Vladimir Putin wants to play. Whether the Kremlin is selling Syria sophisticated Iskander missiles with a range of 175 miles to revive old Cold War alignments in the Mideast, or whether the motive is merely to confer enormous profits on members of Putin's inner circle, the recklessness of these arms deals is the same.

Kommersant reported Thursday that, before his death, Safronov informed his editors that he had been warned not to write about the weapons sales because "doing so would cause an international scandal and the FSB" -- successor to the KGB -- "would make charges against him of stealing state secrets stick." This warning, the testimony of family and friends that he had never seemed suicidal, and the circumstances surrounding his fall from the window -- with his hat and oranges he had purchased scattered on the stairwell below -- strongly suggest he did not plunge from the fifth-floor window accidentally.

If Safronov was indeed the 14th journalist to be murdered in Russia since Putin came to power in 2000 -- without a single conviction to date -- there are unavoidable conclusions to be drawn about the state Putin has forged. Reporters and editors would not be killed with impunity in a state devoted to the genuine rule of law. In a truly pluralist polity, the security services would not warn journalists against stories that embarrass officialdom.

The story Safronov was pursuing illustrates why a free press is indispensable to a free society, and why authoritarian regimes cannot tolerate freedom of the press. Kremlin authorities would not want the truth known about their arms sales to Syria and Iran because of the reaction abroad and because it would reveal yet one more example of how the KGB veterans in Putin's ruling clique are using political power to enrich themselves.

The result of that hostility to probing journalists was evident in a report last week from the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute. It found that during the last decade, only Iraq was more dangerous for journalists than Russia. In that period, 138 in the profession were killed in Iraq, 88 in Russia, and 72 in Colombia. There is no surer sign that the ruler's law has replaced the rule of law.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/12/a_convenient_suicide_in_russia/