When Russian journalists Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguyev, and Orkhan Dzhemal arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Friday last week, they wanted to spend a fortnight investigating a private Russian security company operating in the country and gathering information about Russia’s interests in diamond, gold, and uranium mining in the restive nation.
Although there are some conflicting accounts, it appears the trio departed the capital, Bangui, late Monday night on their way to meet with a United Nations representative in the town of Bambari, about 380 kilometers away. But they never got there. They reportedly were ambushed and killed by about 10 men wearing turbans and speaking Arabic, according to the driver of their vehicle who survived the attack.
The U.N. said on Wednesday that its peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, known as MINUSCA, found the bodies of the journalists “with multiple gunshot wounds, along with an abandoned vehicle, 33 kilometers north of Sibut, in Kemo Prefecture,” which would have been about halfway to their destination.
According to the CNC (Chinese) news agency, locals in Sibut said that the attack was unusual, that the assailants seemed most interested in the “tall and muscular man” (Radchenko, the cameraman) and they wanted to search his pockets, but the journalist resisted and they shot him in front of his friends.
“The bodies were transferred to a U.N. hospital in Sibut and were then transferred to a local hospital in Bangui by national authorities,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York. “The circumstances of the incident have not yet been established.” Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs planned to transport the bodies of the three killed reporters to Moscow on Sunday morning.
The journalists had been assigned to travel to Africa by the Investigations Management Center (IMC), a project funded by former Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the most influential critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The IMC’s manager, Russian senior investigative reporter Andrei Konyakhin, sounded heartbroken on Thursday when he talked to The Daily Beast. “I am looking at dozens of scary photographs of my dead friends, at their wounds,” Konyakhin said. “Somebody just piled up their dead bodies on the ground; their faces are covered with blood, I assume that their kidnappers first beat our guys up, then executed them by shooting right in their hearts.”
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