Chechens blamed by rights groups for attack on journalists
Moscow - In a terrifying outburst of brutality, a small group of journalists investigating human rights abuse in Russia's North Caucasus became victims themselves -- waylaid by cars full of masked men who dragged them by the hair from their minibus, beat them with sticks and set the vehicle ablaze.
Four Russian journalists, one reporter each from Norway and Sweden, and two activists from Russia's Committee to Prevent Torture, were headed with a driver toward Chechnya's provincial capital of Grozny on Wednesday evening when several cars forced their bus off the road and the ferocious attack began.
As they smashed the bus windows and pulled the passengers out, the assailants were shouting "You aren't human rights activists, you're terrorists; you're killing our people," Maria Persson Lofgren said Thursday on Swedish Radio, her employer.
