Journalist sees political motives behind his beating

Director of the Center for Humanitarian Studies Alan Parastayev supposes that political motives are behind his beating by officers of the South Osetian Interior Ministry on December 30, 2004. He said it in the interview he gave to the Caucasian Knot correspondent in the Gudushauri medical center in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he is undergoing a course of treatment. Earlier, Alan Parastayev was in grave condition in the reanimation department of the republican hospital. Doctors were not able to set a diagnosis because of the lack of tomographic equipment. As a result of the computer tomographic examination made in the Georgian hospital, the diagnosis was made: craniocerebral injury, skull base fracture.

South Osetian law enforcers announced that Alan Parastayev prevented from going a column with humanitarian aid for Georgian villages in Georgia.

Recalling the chronology of the December 30 developments, Mr Parastayev said: "I usually furnish information to journalists in North Osetia. Nothing was known about the column in the capital of South Osetia. I needed information about what was happening."

Mr Parastayev claims that he regained consciousness in a hospital in the morning, but does not remember the beating. "It happened quickly ? I lost consciousness. We'll investigate the case anyway. We must get to know what happened. I've got suspicions that this column had to pass without any special information for the population. May be they didn't want the fact itself to become known to the public."