A journalist’s job is to report facts to the public. Yet when a powerful person or an organization wants that information to stay a secret, a journalist’s job as truth-teller can become incredibly hazardous.
In 2018, three Russian journalists were tragically killed while working on a documentary in Africa. At first, official reports claimed the men were killed in a random ambush. Yet when people heard what the journalists were investigating, they started suggesting that something more sinister happened.
An Abandoned Car
On the morning of Tuesday, July 31, 2018, local authorities in the Central African Republic (CAR) found a car riddled with bullet holes about 14 miles north of the village of Sibut, an important transport hub in the country. Along with the car, authorities found the bodies of three Caucasian men. Like the car, their bodies were peppered with bullets.
An Investigation Begins
By the time they were found that morning, the men were already dead. However, authorities took them straight to the UN mission hospital in the city. While hospital officials worked to identify the men, local authorities began an investigation to find out what happened the night before.
The Lone Survivor
Authorities managed to locate the driver of the car, who survived the attack. After speaking with the driver, authorities learned that the group had been ambushed while driving the night before. From the beginning of the investigation, it was suggested that a rebel group was behind the attack.
The Victims
Eventually, the three bodies were identified as Orkhan Dzemal, Alexander Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko, well-known Russian journalists. Dzemal was best known for his work as a war correspondent. His work mainly focused on his reporting from the wars in Georgia, Libya, Syria, and east Ukraine.
Dangerous Work
Rastorguev was a documentary film director best known for filming the Russian protests of 2012. Radchenko was a freelance photographer who worked in Syria for many years documenting the civil war. According to their driver, the men were shot and killed instantly during the ambush that occurred shortly after 10 p.m. on Monday.
Working on Tourist Visas
“The Russian embassy in CAR, unfortunately, was not informed about the presence of Russian journalists in the country,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement about the attack. “Employees of our diplomatic mission are now in close contact with local law enforcement agencies and government agencies to discover all the circumstances relating to the deaths of Russian citizens.”
On Assignment
The attack came just three days after the group arrived in the country. Together, the journalists were working on a documentary for the Investigations Management Center, a media organization owned by an exiled Russian oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, known as a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Is Hope Lost?
“These were brave men who were not prepared simply to collect documentary material, but wanted to ‘feel’ it in the palms of their hands,” Khodorkovsky said in a statement after the deaths and the identities of the bodies were confirmed. “I hoped until the last moment that they had been captured, and that they could be rescued.”
A Warning
“They were kidnapped by about 10 men, all turbaned and speaking only Arabic,” Marcelin Yoyo, a deputy official in Sibut, told The Guardian. According to local authorities, a government official warned the men not to continue their journey the evening they were killed as it can be dangerous to travel on the roads at night.
A Random Robbery
“Security forces in charge told them not to go because it was already dark,” Yoyo explained. After local authorities and Russian officials conducted their investigation into the three deaths, they announced that the attack was simply a random robbery. At the time of their deaths, the men had a large amount of cash on them as well as expensive cameras and equipment, which made them a target.
Many Started to Doubt …
However, when people discovered what the journalists were investigating for their documentary while in CAR, many started to doubt the official explanation. Instead, they suspected that the journalists were killed because of the highly sensitive and dangerous story they were working on. A random robbery seemed, to some, to be too much of a coincidence.
The Wagner Group
According to Khodorkovsky, the men had been sent to the country to work on a documentary about a private military force called the Wagner Group. The organization is allegedly funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who has close ties to Putin. Prigozhin is also known for being a financial backer of the Internet Research Agency, which created countless fake news campaigns to influence the 2016 American presidential election.
Past Actions
In the past, the Wagner Group had sent mercenaries to conflict zones to help advance Russian objectives in places or situations where the Russian government cannot officially send regular troops. Wagner Group helped separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. They also helped loyal, pro-government forces in Syria.
An Unofficial Link
Wagner Group appears to be a private force used to protect Russian business and military interests. Yet the Russian government has always denied that it has anything to do with the mercenary organization. Recently, however, Wagner Group has gotten involved in CAR.
The Civil War
In 2017, the UN gave Russia permission to supply CAR’s government with small arms to help in their civil war against rebels. It is believed that Wagner Group is part of the group of 170 Russian civilian instructors sent to help train CAR’s forces. Yet some suspect Wagner Group is doing more than just helping the government…
Fighting on Both Sides
Analysts suspect that Wagner Group is also helping the rebels so that Russia can have access to areas controlled by rebel forces that have mines rich in deposits of uranium, gold, diamonds and other rare minerals. While in CAR, the three journalists planned on figuring out just what Wagner Group was doing in Africa and what connection, if any, that they had to the Russian government.
Denying the Allegations
“There is no sensation in the presence of Russian instructors in the CAR, no one hid anything,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a Facebook post after it was suggested that the journalists’ death had something to do with their assignment. “The murdered Russian journalists, based on the location of the bodies, did not move at all to the place where the instructors work. Moreover, based on information received from the local site, they ignored warnings that they are leaving the zone controlled by local law enforcement agencies. What they really were doing in the CAR, what were their goals and objectives — is a question.”
An Independent Investigation
In the weeks after the attack, a private group conducted their own investigation. Their findings supported theories that the killings were actually a planned attack to stop them from finding anything out about Wagner and send a message to other journalists looking into the same topic.“Our sources determined that the killers had set up a temporary camp at the point where the ambush happened,” Roman Popkov told The Independent regarding the results of the investigation.
An Inconsistent Story
“Whoever killed the journalists left expensive items in the car, including three full canisters of petrol, some of the technical equipment and clothing. And then they packed up their camp. None of that seems consistent with a robbery,” Popkov said. “This was done in a very demonstrative fashion,” Andrei Konyakhin, the chief editor of the Investigations Management Center, told the Associated Press.
A Hell of a Coincidence
“If they could have just taken everything from them, why kill them,” Konyakhin speculated. “It sure seems like a hell of a coincidence that all four Russian investigative journalists that turned up dead in the last few months were investigating Wagner [Group],” Julia Ioffe, a Moscow correspondent, told the Columbia Journalism Review.
Investigation Suggests Mysterious Demise of Russian Journalists Wasn’t an Accident is an article from: LifeDaily