Journalist of "Novaya Gazeta" outraged that his telephone conversations with Egle Kusaite were added to case files

Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist, the war correspondent of the "Novaya Gazeta" and a veteran of two Chechen wars, has addressed - via the Internet - to the Lithuanian Embassy demanding clarifications on why his telephone conversations with Egle Kusaite, accused of preparing a terror act in the territory of Russia, were added to the criminal case and are now used as proofs of Kusaite's pressure on the investigation. The journalist himself told about it to the "Caucasian Knot".

According to the Lithuanian journalist Thomas Chivas, the prosecution now resents these printouts as evidence of Kusaite's pressure on investigators. Vitautas Mezhrikaitis, a journalist and a rights defender from the Lithuanian public association "Let's Save All Chechen Children!" in Chechnya, has reported earlier that the Kusaite's criminal case very carefully shows the talks of last November, when Oksana Chelysheva, Arkady Babchenko, and other Russian and Lithuanian journalists came to meet Egle Kusaite and the children of the Chechen Gataev family, who were in the SOS-village near Vilnius.

"All my telephone conversations with Egle, her mother and her aunt referred exclusively to our meeting and a possible interview with her - nothing more. There was no prior agreement about the meeting. Any arrangements about the content of the article and possible pressure on the court were absolutely impossible. I write only what I find necessary, and never make customized materials," Arkady Babchenko told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"Since my name figures in this criminal case in the context of 'exerting pressure on the court', as well as because the Lithuanian State Security Department is de facto accusing me and Oksana Chelysheva of complicity in a crime, I would like to obtain explanation from the Embassy of Lithuania. How have my private telephone conversations with Egle Kusaite, made, by the way, when she was at large, got into the case files? In what way can it be regarded as putting pressure on the court and the basis for her re-detention? Let the Lithuanian embassy try to explain," said Arkady Babchenko.

Currently, he is addressing representatives of the Republic of Lithuania through his page in LiveJournal, which, according to Babchenko is read in Lithuania. The journalist does not exclude his official address to the Lithuanian Embassy with observance of all the formalities required by the law.

Oksana Chelysheva, deputy head of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, which was stopped in Russia and later reopened in Finland, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the incident with Egle Kusaite's telephone conversations with Russians is just another confirmation of the fact that Lithuania transforms into a police state.

According to her version, Lithuanian anti-terrorist fighters try to transform the work of journalists into a criminal article, by interpreting it as pressure on the court. "Just in the same way like they had tried to transform the naive into a sort of Lithuanian Bin Laden," said Chelysheva and added that the criminal case was built on printouts of Egle's telephone conversations, which had been tapped for several years.

"The problems of Lithuania are in the absence of control over security services by the society. The problems of the European Union (EU) are in inability to influence their new colleagues after their accession to the EU," said Oksana Chelysheva.