Report: Russian journalist who died in fall investigated weapons deals with Iran, Syria
MOSCOW: A Russian journalist who died after falling from a fifth-story window had received threats while gathering material for a report claiming Moscow planned to provide sophisticated weapons to Syria and Iran, his newspaper said Tuesday.
Prosecutors have opened an inquest into the death of Ivan Safronov, a military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant who died Friday in what some media said could have be a murder.
Kommersant said Tuesday that Safronov told his editors he would write a report about Russian plans to sell weapons to Iran and Syria via Belarus, but they said he had not yet submitted the article.
Kommersant said Safronov recently told colleagues that he had been warned he would face a criminal investigation on charges of revealing state secrets if he reported allegations that Russia had struck a deal to supply highly advanced Iskander missiles to Syria. If confirmed, such a contract would upset the balance of forces in the Mideast and likely deeply anger Israel and the United States.
"Ivan Safronov said he was not going to write about it for a while because he was warned that it would create a huge international scandal and the FSB (Federal Security Service) would launch a criminal case on charges of breaching state secrets," it said.
Safronov did not say where the warning came from, according to Kommersant, but he had repeatedly been questioned in the past by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor, which suspected him of divulging state secrets in his reports.
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