Criticism as Russian reporter convicted of defaming official

A RUSSIAN reporter left handicapped by a 2008 attack he linked to his work was convicted yesterday of defaming one of the officials he criticised.

Mikhail Beketov’s supporters said the verdict was another sign of degrading media freedom in Russia, where another journalist covering the same story was beaten so badly over the weekend that doctors placed him into an artificial coma to protect his brain.

Beketov, a reporter for the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, irked authorities with his articles of corruption involving the Khimki forest, part of which officials have torn down to make way for a highway to St Petersburg that may or may not be built.

Beketov uses a wheelchair after a vicious beating by two unidentified assailants near his home left him unconscious in the snow. He had a leg amputated and is unable to speak. His supporters claim the attack was retaliation for articles criticising local authorities.

One of the officials Beketov criticised was Vladimir Strelchenko, the mayor of Khimki, a town just outside Moscow that is home to the forest. Beketov gave a 2007 television interview in which he accused Strelchenko of involvement in blowing up his car.

Strelchenko sued for slander and the court in Khimki issued a 5,000 ruble (about €120) fine but said Mikhail Beketov didn’t have to pay because of a technicality.

Beketov’s assistant said he would appeal.

“There’s nothing human left in this man,” Lyudmila Fedotova, head of the Beketov Foundation support group, said of Strelchenko.

The mayor was in court on Tuesday and declared he felt sorry for Beketov but also compelled to forge ahead with charges.

The scandal over the highway was a chief topic in the writings of Oleg Kashin, a reporter for the Kommserant broadsheet who was brutally mugged in Moscow on Saturday.

According to Russian media, doctors have voiced cautious optimism that Kashin was improving.