ABC Barred from School No. 1

Monday, September 5, 2005

ABC Television Journalists Barred From School No. 1

Bloomberg

Journalists with U.S. television network ABC were barred from entering Beslan School No. 1 last week to film commemorations for the anniversary of the Sept. 1-3, 2004, attack, an ABC spokeswoman said.

Beslan officials said ABC staff had not been included on a list of accredited journalists supplied by the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. The Foreign Ministry said any decision about admittance to the Beslan school was a matter for local authorities. ABC angered Moscow in July by broadcasting an interview with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for seizing the school.

The Foreign Ministry, which accredits foreign journalists, said at the time that it would not renew the accreditation of staff members in ABC's Moscow bureau when they expired late this year. Asked why the ABC crew had been barred Thursday from the school, Ksenia Gokoyeva, a spokeswoman for North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov, said, "We all know that they lost their accreditation after the Basayev interview."

Also Thursday, North Ossetian police prevented Radio Liberty correspondent Yuri Bagrov from covering the anniversary commemorations. Bagrov said police officers asked him for his accreditation and passport, and when he could provide neither, detained him. He was released in the afternoon and returned to his home in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz. Bagrov does not have a passport or accreditation after being stripped of both last year in a case that he and media freedom groups call retribution for his critical coverage of the ongoing war in nearby Chechnya.


(via chechnya-sl)