MOSCOW, Jan 6 At the editor-in-chief detained in Latvia Sputnik Lithuania Marat Kasem's phone was taken away, now there is no connection with him, said Dmitry Kiselev, general director of the Russia Today media group.
«The phone was taken away from him, and now we have no connection,» Kiselyov said.
Your browser does not support this video format.
A rally in support of Kasem took place near the Latvian embassy in Moscow on Friday.
Marat Kasem is a citizen of Latvia and has been living and working in Moscow for several years in the Russia Today media group, which also includes Sputnik Lithuania. On December 30, the journalist arrived in Latvia for family reasons. According to Sputnik Lithuania, he was detained, and on January 5, the Riga court took him into custody, he had already been transferred to the Riga Central Prison.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier that the detention of Kasem in Latvia is the revenge of the dictatorial regimes for his adherence to principles and constitutes terror against dissent. Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova called the detention of the editor-in-chief of Sputnik Lithuania an attack on freedom of speech and appealed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The head of the Union of Journalists of Russia, Vladimir Solovyov, commenting on the situation, said that the UJR considers this one of the most serious violations and will send information about what is happening to all international journalistic human rights organizations.