MOSCOW, 13 April 2004 — Two Russian journalists were detained yesterday in Qatar for working without proper accreditation, raising diplomatic tensions between Moscow and the Gulf emirate.
The two television reporters were detained while filming, a spokesman for their company Ren TV said in Moscow. The station has been unable to establish contact with the two men since shortly after their arrest, he added. The incident came one day after a trial opened in Doha of two Russian secret agents accused of the February murder of a former president of Russia’s breakaway Chechnya republic in Qatar, where he was living in exile. Their arrest has been the focus of Russian media for weeks.
The defendants, identified as Anatoly Bilashkov and Vassily Pokchov, stand accused of 10 charges, including the Feb. 13 assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
They are also accused of attempting to kill Yandarbiyev’s 13-year-old son and of smuggling arms into Qatar, according to the formal accusations read out in court by a representative of the prosecutor general.
In what has escalated into a diplomatic row between the Gulf state and Russia, Qatar expelled the first secretary of the Russian Embassy late last month after detaining him and the agents in connection with the murder of Yandarbiyev in a car bomb.
