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Agence France-Presse

The staged “murder” of anti-Kremlin journalist Arkady Babchenko, which stunned observers and enraged Russia, actually has a precedent.
It was back in 1982 that the secret services of then communist-run Romania planned to assassinate Virgil Tanase, a France-based dissident writer.
Following publication of a Tanase article in French news magazine Actuel, highly critical of the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, Bucharest dispatched Matei Haiducu, a French-based agent, to kill the author, by then a French citizen.
But Haidacu blew the whistle on the assassination plan, revealing the Romanian plot to the French along with a plan to murder fellow dissident Paul Goma.
This man is not dead. It’s the curious case of the resurrected reporter
It was then that French authorities staged Tanase’s abduction.
“Virgil Tanase was a Romanian refugee in France that the Romanian (intelligence) services, the famous Securitate, wanted to eliminate and the DST (French surveillance) hid away for a time while making out he was dead,” said Eric Denece, director of France’s CF2R intelligence service.
Jacques-Marie Bourget and Yvan Stefanovitch wrote a book – Des affaires très spéciales (very special affairs) – on the case.
“On May 20, 1982, Virgil Tanase was abducted outside his home in Paris,” the pair wrote. His wife, concerned at having no news, phoned the DST. The following day, accompanied by two policemen from the service she reported her husband’s disappearance to her local police station.
“She was all the more perfect in the role of worried spouse in that she did not know what had happened to her husband and that a great farce was being played out.”
It was another parallel to Ukraine case, as Babchenko’s wife had no inkling that the death of her husband had been faked – something for which he apologised when he re-emerged.
Virgil Tanase was spirited away to a safe house in Brittany for three months while the Romanian Securitate were accused over his killing.
A Paris newspaper then got wind of the truth and Tanase promptly emerged on the Actuel magazine’s premises to give a press conference.
“In the eyes of French counter-intelligence the affair appeared a success,” wrote Bourget and Stefanovitch.
The case, worthy of a spy drama, saw then French president Francois Mitterand, fearing the “tragic hypothesis” of a state-sanctioned murder, cancel a scheduled trip to Bucharest.
Tanase, today aged 72, returned to his career as writer and dramatist.


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France

A fake French kidnap plot in 1982 serves as precedent for Ukraine’s fake assassination drama

Virgil Tanase emerges from hiding to appear at the office of Actuel magazine in Paris in 1982 to give a press conference, three months after his faked abduction. Photo: Agence France-Presse

This man is not dead. He’s not even hurt. It’s the curious case of the resurrected reporter, Arkady Babchenko

This photo, initially shared on Facebook by a Ukraine lawmaker, purportedly showed Arkady Babchenko lying in a pool of blood. But the photo was faked, and Babchenko unharmed. Photo: Facebook

epa06771964 Ukrainian policemen guard an entrance to the home of Russian opposition journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kiev, Ukraine, 29 May 2018. Russian opposition journalist Arkadiy Babchenko, who lived in Ukraine, was shot on 29 May 2018 in his Kiev home by three shots to his back and died from his wounds on the way to hospital, local media report. Babchenko was criticizing Russian authorities and writing about arrests of Crimean-Tatarian journalists in the Crimea after annexation of it by Russia. EPA-EFE/STEPAN FRANKO

Journalists are at work at the entrance of the building where journalist Arkadi Babchenko was shot dead in his apartment on May 29, 2018. "Arkadi Babchenko was killed by three gunshots to the back in the stairwell of his building as he came home from the store," a colleague, journalist Osman Pashayev, wrote on Facebook. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKY

In this video grab made on May 30, 2018 from a YouTube video posted by Ukraine's security service (SBU), officers arrest the alleged mastermind of an alleged Russian plot designed to kill prominent Russian anti-Kremlin journalist, war correspondent and former soldier Arkady Babchenko whose death from three gunshots to the back was announced less than 24 hours before he finally appeared alive and well at a press conference on May 30 as Ukraine admitted it had faked his death in order to foil an attempt on his life by Moscow. / AFP PHOTO / Ukraine's security service AND YOUTUBE / - / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / YOUTUBE / UKRAINE'S SECURITY SERVICE" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko (C), who was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital on May 29, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (R) and head of the state security service (SBU) Vasily Gritsak attend a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

‘Dead’ Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko back to life as he reveals officials faked his death ‘to catch a real killer hired by Russian security services’

Babchenko, who had been reported shot and killed in Ukraine on Tuesday, has shown up alive, with Ukranian officials saying his ‘death’ was a trap for a Russian security service assassin

TOPSHOT - Flowers lay under a picture of the 41-year-old anti-Kremlin reporter Arkady Babchenko on the memorial wall of Moscow's journalists house in Moscow on May 30, 2018. The prominent Russian war correspondent and former soldier was shot dead on May 29 evening in an apparent contract-style killing in the stairwell of his building in Kiev. He had moved to the Ukrainian capital last year following a campaign of harassment in Moscow. / AFP PHOTO / Vasily MAXIMOV

Renowned journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya. Photo: AFP

FILE - In this Aug. 29, 2008 file photo, Dagestan journalist Khadzhimurad Kamalov speaks during a rally in Makhachkala, Dagestan, southern Russia. Kamalov, the founder of Chernovik (Rough Draft), an independent weekly newspaper critical of authorities in the restive province of Dagestan in Russia's North Caucasus, has died after being riddled with bullets outside his office, police said Friday, Dec. 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Sergei Rasulov, NewsTeam, file)

Policemen stand guard at the entrance of the building where journalist Arkadi Babchenko was shot dead in his apartment on May 29, 2018. "Arkadi Babchenko was killed by three gunshots to the back in the stairwell of his building as he came home from the store," a colleague, journalist Osman Pashayev, wrote on Facebook. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKY

(FILE) A picture taken on August 20, 2009 shows Kommersant's reporter Oleg Kashin in Moscow. Assailants on November 6, 2010 gravely wounded Oleg Kahsin, a leading journalist for Russian newspaper Kommersant in an attempted murder, the latest such attack in a country notorious for its media safety record, officials said. The respected daily said in a statement that two attackers beat Oleg Kashin with a hard object outside his apartment block in central Moscow in the early hours of Saturday, forcing doctors to put him in an induced coma. AFP PHOTO / KOMMERSANT / SVETLANA PRIVALOVA

epa06771911 A picture made available on 29 May 2018 shows Russian opposition journalist Arkady Babchenko (R) with others unidentified take part in action to commemorate killed Belarus-born Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kiev, Ukraine, 20 July 2017. Russian opposition journalist Arkadiy Babchenko, who lived in Ukraine, was shot on 29 May 2018 in his Kiev home by three shots to his back and died from his wounds on the way to hospital, local media report. Babchenko was criticizing Russian authorities and writing about arrests of Crimean-Tatarian journalists in the Crimea after annexation of it by Russia. EPA-EFE/INNA SOKOLOVSKA

** FILE ** In this June, 1991 file photo of Russian journalist Mikhail Beketov seen in Moscow. It is reported Saturday Nov. 22, 2008, that editor of the Khimkinskaya Pravda newspaper, Beketov was brutally beaten last week and found unconscious near his home in a district outside Moscow, and he remains in a coma in critical condition and relatives have said he is unlikely to survive. Colleagues have said Beketov had been repeatedly threatened for his reports on illegal timber harvesting in Moscow region forests. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, centre, who was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital on May 29, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, right, and head of the state security service Vasily Gritsak attend a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Ukraine blames Russia for murder of anti-Kremlin reporter Arkady Babchenko

Prominent war correspondent was murdered in a contract-style killing in the stairwell of his building in the Ukrainian capital Kiev where he moved last year

epa06771910 A picture made available on 29 May 2018 shows Russian opposition journalist Arkady Babchenko take part in action to commemorate killed Belarus-born Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kiev, Ukraine, 20 July 2017. Russian opposition journalist Arkadiy Babchenko, who lived in Ukraine, was shot on 29 May 2018 in his Kiev home by three shots to his back and died from his wounds on the way to hospital, local media report. Babchenko was criticizing Russian authorities and writing about arrests of Crimean-Tatarian journalists in the Crimea after annexation of it by Russia. EPA-EFE/INNA SOKOLOVSKA

A Ukrainian police officer outside the flat block where Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was shot in Kiev, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Babchenko died of his wounds en route to a hospital. Photo: Reuters

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