POLITKOVSKAYA GETS MESSAGE TO HER EDITORS.

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported on February 11 that, on the previous day, its award-winning war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya had been taken into custody while she was covering a mopping up operation being conducted in Shatoi District. According to one account, she was taken to the district military commandant’s office, per another, to the local department of the MVD. Later the same day, Novaya Gazeta established that Politkovskaya had succeeded in making her way to Nazran, Ingushetia, where she had found shelter in the local offices of the human rights organization Memorial. At 4:30 p.m. on February 11, Politkovskaya was able to send this message to her editors: “The official version of what happened, which is being distributed through the information agencies, cannot withstand any criticism. Everything happened, to put it mildly, differently.” The editors pledged to provide Politkovskaya’s version of events in a forthcoming issue of the paper.