GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION'S DIGEST No. 191 (July 19, 2004)

Secret services bug phones of NTV's staff correspondent in Crimea.

By Mark Agatov,
GDF staff correspondent in Ukraine and ACR

Investigation of the recent attack on NTV staff correspondent Anna Konyukova has triggered a major scandal in the Crimea. Local law enforcers began to actively check up the circumstances of the attack only after officials of the RF General Consulate in Simferopol interfered. However, they have not tracked down either the assailants or any of those who ordered the criminal action.

Instead, they have bugged Ms. Konyukova's home and mobile phones to eavesdrop on her telephone conversations.

A. Konyukova says the fact was admitted by an officer of the city police department. "By illegally bugging my phones, they deprived me of the opportunity to perform my professional duties as a journalist," she told GDF. "As a result, before starting to talk on the telephone with any of my sources of information about Crimean developments, I have been compelled to warn them in advance that our conversation will be recorded and that they may have problems with the law enforcers later. Thus, the authorities have brazenly violated both the international and Ukrainian laws guaranteeing the journalists the right not to disclose their information sources."

In Ms. Konyukova's view, "Ukrainian secret services have only been trying to 'neutralize' a disagreeable journalist. Eavesdropping on my telephone conversations will never lead to identifying the criminals. If someone started to threaten me over the phone, I would be able to record the conversation myself and identify the caller's number".

Over the years of their work in the Crimea, Anna Konyukova and her husband Viktor Sosnovsky, an NTV cameraman, have suffered three attacks. On three occasions, criminals have tried to set their Simferopol apartment on fire. Each time, the criminal cases started by the local law enforcers ended in no suspects tracked down.