Colleagues urge investigation into Russian journalist's death

[clear eye]

Source: The Guardian

Olga Kotovskaya, a prominent journalist in Kaliningrad, fell from 14th-storey window a day after winning major legal case

Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 December 2009 15.17 GMT

Olga Kotovskaya, a prominent journalist in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, died on 16 November. Officials initially claimed her death was suicide, but last week opened a criminal investigation into claims that she had been murdered. The case has attracted little attention from Russia's predominantly Kremlin-controlled media, and news of the suspicious death did not reach international human rights groups until earlier this week.

Kotovskaya fell from a window a day after winning a long-running court battle to regain control of her successful Kaskad regional TV channel. Founded in the early 90s, the channel had a reputation for objective news reporting, live broadcasts, and studio guests who were sometimes critical of regional leaders.

In 2004, a group of local bureaucrats, led by Kaliningrad's former deputy governor Vladimir Pirogov, seized control of the channel, which immediately stopped criticising the enclave's administration.

A day before Kotovskaya's death, a court ruled that her signature on a document giving her company to its new owners had been forged.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/01/olga-kotovskaya-journalist-death-kaliningrad

[juno jones]

1. Falling from great heights is a perfectly natural way to die.

In fact, in the US we have a quite a few people who were journalists and whistleblowers who have suddenly, on the verge of successfully telling their story, spontaneously jumped from high buildings. It is maddening to see it happen, but one must conclude that it is naturally occuring and there is probably no reason to look farther than the superficial and mundane to justify it. I mean, who doesn't want to kill themselves the way things are going lately, eh? Lucky bastards.