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Four arrested in plot to kill investigative journalist

(RSF/IFEX) - Four people have been arrested for plotting to murder one of the Czech Republic's best-known journalists, Sabina Slonkova, the Czech Interior Ministry announced on 22 July 2002. Slonkova, who works for the daily newspaper "Dnes", recently investigated an embezzlement case connected with the construction of the Czech cultural centre in Moscow, Russia. The plan had been to kill her on 17 July.




"This is an extremely serious development," said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to Interior Minister Stanislav Gross. "We ask you to see to it that nobody escapes punishment, whatever their position, especially if it is true that one or more top Foreign Ministry officials ordered the murder or knew about the plan," Ménard added. The former secretary-general of the Czech Foreign Ministry, Karel Srba, is reportedly among those arrested in the plot.

"The Czech Republic must firmly turn the page on practices still common in Russia and the former Soviet Union," Ménard said. "With only a few months to go before the country joins the European Union, the police and courts must indicate, through exemplary measures, that they will no longer compromise where press freedom is concerned," he added.

The arrests of the four suspects were carried out by the Interior Ministry's Organised Crime Unit, which said this was the country's first known case involving a conspiracy to murder a journalist.