Kremlin Threatens Human Rights Activist

On January 28 the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) took another step back toward the tactics of the Brezhnev era by summoning Aleksandr Podrabinek, editor in chief of the human rights news agency Prima, for interrogation. Podrabinek’s offense, according to a January 29 article by Orkhan Dzhemal in Novaya gazeta, was to have tried to import Aleksandr Litvinenko’s and Yury Felshtinsky’s book “The FSB Blows Up Russia,” which raises unwelcome (to the Russian authorities) questions about the notorious 1999 apartment bombings. The veteran human rights activist refused to yield to the secret police, and they are now threatening him with criminal prosecution.

The text of the book can be found in full on the website www.terror99.ru.