MEDIA SHACKLED.

The November 6 issue of the website Politcom.ru reported that, five days previously, on November 1, agents of the FSB had raided the editorial offices of the weekly newspaper Versiya. They came to “seize the computer of one of the journalists and to take away the [newspaper’s] main server.” In the opinion of the editor of the weekly, the FSB agents came “for an article that was to appear on the fourth page concerning the freeing of the hostages at Dubrovka.” That article had reported that there were considerably more victims among the hostages than government sources were admitting to. On November 4, Versiya went to press and included an article, written by journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, on precisely the subject that had apparently been of such concern to the FSB. From an apartment building adjacent to the theater, the authors said that they had been able to view clearly “about 150” dead bodies of hostages who had been taken outside the theater building. Many of those who were reported to have died in hospital had, it seemed, perished in the theater building itself.

The website Newsru.com (which is associated with NTV) reported on November 7 that the Moscow Procuracy had made public a list of all of the hostages who had perished as a result of the storming of the theater building at Dubrovka. The full names of 120 Russian citizens and eight foreign citizens were provided. “As of today,” the website then noted, “eighty-two names remain on the list of those who have disappeared without trace.”