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Many questions to organizers of reporters’ fatal trip to CAR remain — Foreign Ministry

The trip organizers failed to inform the Russian embassy in Bangui about the journalists' arrival and their mission in the country

Portraits of journalists killed in the Central African Republic (CAR), Orkhan Jemal, Kirill Radchenko and Alexander Rastorguyev Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

Portraits of journalists killed in the Central African Republic (CAR), Orkhan Jemal, Kirill Radchenko and Alexander Rastorguyev

© Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/. The investigation into last year’s killing of Russian journalists Orkhan Jemal, Alexander Rastorguyev and Kirill Radchenko in the Central African Republic is continuing and many questions to the trip’s organizers remain, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

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"Many questions to those who organized the journalists’ trip remain unanswered," the Foreign Ministry stated. "The embassy of the Central African Republic in Moscow was misled regarding the real purpose of the group’s visit and issued tourist visas. Radchenko, Jemal and Rastorguyev worked without proper accreditation and permissions to carry cameras and film videos."

"We would like to point out that the websites of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the ministry’s Crisis Management Center and the Russian embassy in Bangui contained information about the complicated military-political situation in the CAR and warnings to refrain from trips to that country, let alone leave its capital," the Russian Foreign Ministry noted. "The persons who had sent the camera crew to Bangui had not notified the Russian embassy of the reporters’ arrival or the purposes of the trip, although the embassy might have provided assistance to the Russians from the standpoint of their security and would possibly have prevented such tragic consequences."

"Once again the question arises what aims were pursued by the organizers of that trip who sent the journalists on a mission jeopardizing their lives," the Foreign Ministry remarked.

The Russian journalists were murdered in the Central African Republic at the end of July 2018 while filming a documentary. Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case over the killing and is conducting the investigation in cooperation with the CAR authorities.

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