Moscow, Russia:

Russia has detained prominent journalist Nadezhda Kevorkova and charged her with “justifying terrorism” over posts on her Telegram account, her lawyer said Monday.

Kevorkova, 65, wrote for a number of outlets including Novaya Gazeta and Russia Today and specialised in coverage of the Middle East, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.   

“Nadezhda Kevorkova has been detained and will be taken to a temporary detention centre today. The matter of pre-trial restrictions will be decided tomorrow,” lawyer Kaloy Akhilgov said.

The charges relate to two posts on her Telegram from 2018 and 2021, one a re-post from another journalist about the 2005 Islamist raid on Nalchik and the other about Afghanistan, he said.

The raid on Nalchik, a city in Russia’s North Caucasus, saw armed Islamist militants target government and security buildings in an attack that left dozens of people dead.

Her ex-husband Maxim Shevchenko, who presents a talk show on state television, rejected the charges against her.

“Nadezhda Kevorkova never justified terrorism and never justified the attack on Nalchik … but as a journalist, she certainly wrote about torture during the investigation,” he said.

Russia has waged an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of the press since launching its full-scale offensive in Ukraine, silencing and detaining journalists at odds with the Kremlin.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)