Russia bans ABC following interview with Chechen rebel leader

There are no reviewed versions of this page, so it may not have been checked for adherence to standards.

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

The American Broadcasting Company's (ABC) accreditation in Russia will not be renewed by the Russian Government following an interview with Shamil Basayev on ABC.

Basayev is a Chechen rebel leader — who seeks an end to Russian rule of Chechnya — and has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist incidents, including the Beslan school siege where 344 civilians - 172 of them children - were killed. The interview with Basayev was conducted by freelance journalist Andrei Babitsky and was shown during ABC's Nightline.

A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said: "A decision was taken that at the end of their expiry period, the accreditations of the workers of this company will not be renewed."

Initially, the Foreign Ministry had opposed this action, which was pushed by the Defence Ministry. After Basayev's interview, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said that ABC was "persona non grata" and described it as a "rogue tv station".

In the interview, Basayev said that he was responsible for the Beslan atrocity and that further Beslan-style attacks would take place.

Sources

"Russia bars ABC over interview" — BBC, August 2, 2005
"Russia's foreign ministry does not intend to revoke ABC's accreditation" — RIA Novosti, July 31, 2005

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
Please note that this only applies to Wikinews content created prior to September 25, 2005. All content created after that date is released under a Creative Commons license which is mentioned at the bottom of each article. This is currently the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.