Yielding to Pressure, Russia Frees Journalist Babitsky From Custody

MOSCOW — In a sign of Kremlin sensitivity to the international condemnation of Russia’s treatment of journalist Andrei Babitsky, the correspondent for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty was freed from custody Tuesday after acting President Vladimir V. Putin intervened.

But Russian authorities have Babitsky--who mysteriously disappeared in January after angering the Kremlin with his reports on the war in Chechnya--on a short leash. The journalist, who returned to Moscow on Tuesday, still faces charges and isn’t allowed to leave the city, making it impossible for him to resume reporting on Chechnya.

Babitsky was arrested in Chechnya in mid-January and charged with cooperating with the rebels in the separatist republic. Interviewed Tuesday by the Russian NTV network, he blamed the authorities for the tribulations he and his family have endured.

“I am deeply convinced that the authorities, including the Interior Ministry, which is pretending to help me now, have been seriously involved in all this mess and in the nightmare that my family had to go through, and the grave situation I personally had to experience over the past two months,” he said.

Looking drawn and exhausted, he described being beaten in the notorious Chernokozovo “filtration” camp in Chechnya--one of several prisons where Chechen suspects are held and interrogated--but said his treatment was not nearly as bad as that of other prisoners.

“For the first three days that I was there, the beatings of prisoners went on round the clock,” he said. “I never thought that I would hear such a variety of expressions of human pain. They were not just screams--they were screams in all different kinds of tone and depth.”

During his more than two weeks in Chernokozovo, he said, he was beaten once, when he had to crawl to interrogation under a hail of truncheon blows.

Early last month, Russian authorities traded Babitsky to a group of masked men who were supposedly Chechen rebels but were never identified. He disappeared and was widely feared dead.

After being held for about three weeks in a Chechen village, Babitsky surfaced Friday in Dagestan, a southern Russian republic neighboring Chechnya. But he was again arrested and placed in custody, this time for using a false passport.

Before the journalist turned up alive, many Russian newspapers and analysts had judged the Babitsky case to be Putin’s worst mistake. The storm of criticism in Russia and the West appeared to take the Kremlin by surprise.

Putin’s own position on Babitsky shifted in recent weeks. In a Feb. 11 radio interview, he dismissed the idea that Babitsky had sacrificed himself by agreeing to be traded to the Chechen side for Russian POWs.

“He has not sacrificed himself,” Putin said. “This was his voluntary decision. He went to the people whose interests he effectively served.”

But Monday, Putin intervened to have the journalist freed, making it clear to Interior Minister Vladimir B. Rushailo that he disagreed with the decision to hold Babitsky after his second arrest.

“I expressed my opinion that I believe it is unnecessary to keep Babitsky in custody,” Putin said Monday, “and have asked them to deal with the matter more carefully.”

Early Tuesday, Babitsky was flown home to Moscow and released on the condition that he not leave town while the charges against him are investigated.

Political analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky said the treatment of Babitsky shows that the Kremlin is sensitive to world opinion about the case.

“The authorities are trying to put a good face on a very ugly game. They are at least trying to save Putin’s image,” he said. “What we have just witnessed is a poorly staged and performed play about a bunch of bad investigators and a good president who is gallant and wise enough to save a nosy reporter from his grave predicament.”

Piontkovsky contended that the Russian move to trade Babitsky to a group of armed and masked men was probably a Kremlin scheme to get rid of the journalist, which backfired.

“At the time, it sounded no better than a death penalty verdict,” he said. “But the scale of world public dismay and protest was seriously underestimated, and now the Kremlin has clumsily backed down and released Babitsky while trying to rescue acting President Putin from under fire.”

Opinion polls indicate that the public is divided on the Babitsky case. A poll released by the Russian Center for Public Opinion and Market Research on Tuesday found that 34% approved of the authorities’ actions and 26% disapproved.