RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICES prevented the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent from re-entering the country three days ago, making Luke Harding the first British journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War.
Harding has been reporting from Russia for three years and recently travelled back to the UK on secondment to cover the WikiLeaks release of a cache of US diplomatic cables.
Among the negative and potentially damaging accusations made in the cables, some suggested that Putin had “probably” agreed to the assassination of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko, and described Russia as a “virtual mafia state” which operates on a system of bribes, extortion and arms trafficking.
State-run news agency RIA Novosti claims that a security source said Harding’s name is on a list of undesirable persons, according to the AFP. That source did not specify why Harding’s name had been put on the list.
The Guardian says that Harding was put in a cell within half an hour of arriving at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, despite having a valid visa, and was quickly put back on a plane to the UK. The paper says no reason for his explusion has been offered by officials, but suggested that reporting on state corruption, government brutality in the Caucases and the “shrinking space for a free press” were likely factors.
The newspaper says that the one thing likely to have triggered his explusion was his work on the WikiLeaks cables.
Harding has also co-authored a book on WikiLeaks called WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, and discusses that book with his colleagues in the following video:
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