160308_tvoyden

tajikistanweb.com

160308 - Although Russian agents have denied a media report that they had foiled an assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin on March 2, Tvoy Den’s headline still reads: "President Assassination Plot Foiled."

Russian Tvoy Den’ (Your Day) daily was the first medium to report on Friday about ‘a plot’ against Putin without giving any sources for its story. Security officers raided an apartment in the Red Square’s vicinity at 8pm on March 2 to detain a 24-year-old Tajik national with a "whole arsenal of firearms", including a sniper rifle and a Kalashnikov assault rifle, the daily stated. The ‘Tajik national’ was named as Shakhvelad Osmanov and his photo was published on the paper with an image of an unwrapped Kalashnikov rifle in a sport bag.

The news spread like wildfire through AFP and papers like London’s Telegraph provided their readers with a full coverage of the ‘incident’. However, the Russian agents' denial has been reported only by few agencies.

Interfax news agency quotes an unnamed secret service officer as saying: "Reports that there was some kind of plot against the leadership of the country are absolutely false."

There had been arrests in March of "people with weapons", the officer said, but it had nothing to do with an assassination attempt. "We are talking about an organized crime group,'' explained the officer.

Tvoy Den’ has not explained its misreporting yet leaving many questions unanswered. It is not clear yet who the person on the paper’s photos is indeed and why he had been introduced as ‘a Tajik terrorist’. And it’s not known whether any action will be taken against the paper for publishing a misleading report.

TvoyDen’ Friday report was linked with FSB chief Patrushev’s earlier remark that Russian security services had foiled "terrorist attacks" during the presidential election campaign and on the election day. And the account given by Tvoi Den’ contained a thoroughly detailed description of the ‘plot’ with a map of the alleged terrorist attempt. An informant had told FSB officials a few days before the election that Putin’s assassination was being planned, the paper claimed. It even gave an approximate address of the apartment rented by ‘the terrorist’.

The report was put under doubt straight away by some Tajik bloggers citing that the name of the alleged ‘Tajik national’ did not correspond with Cyrillic Persian (Tajik) orthography. The rare Perso-Arabic name Шахвелад (Shahvelad) is written as Шохвалад (Shaahvalad) in Cyrillic Persian (Tajik) and the surname Osmanov spelt in a different, non-Tajik way as well. According to the paper’s allegation, Osmanov surrendered without resistance at 8pm, while Putin was on the Red Square by that time and Osmanov was supposed to be carrying out his mission. The overall incoherence of the story details raised suspicions that the paper might have been masterminding a plot itself against a different target.

Some Tajik observers believe that the Tvoy Den’ misinformation could have been plotted in order to define directives for the President-elect Medvedev with regard to labour migrants in Russia. On the other hand, this kind of misleading information can further ignite already overwhelming hatred against migrants in Russia that results in hundreds of deaths every year.