Andrea Lucidi came to the country to gather data about local prisons as part of a group of journalists and legal experts
Russian-Italian reporter Andrea Lucidi, who covers the conflict in Ukraine, has said that he had been detained in Türkiye and deported from the country to Italy.
Lucidi is the editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of the outlet International Reporters. He has been working in Russia since 2022 and became a Russian citizen in January. The journalist previously expressed fears about returning to Italy where he had been branded “a Kremlin agent.”
Turkish police officers detained Lucidi in Istanbul on Thursday together with a group of foreign journalists and legal experts, who came to the country to collect data about the local prison system. Among those arrested were citizens of Russia, France, Spain and Belgium.
In a video published by International Reporters, Lucidi said that the officers acted in violation of protocol by wearing civilian clothes, lacking identification badges, and never announcing the reason for the detention of the group. According to the journalist, they were also not provided with a lawyer or a translator and their requests to contact the consulates of their respective countries were denied.
Lucidi said that he and the others were placed in a removal center for illegal migrants, which he compared to a “concentration camp.” The next day, he was deported to Italy, the journalist added. He plans to return to Russia in April.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that Lucidi’s detention happened just a day before a UN Security Council Arria-Formula Meeting called for by Moscow to discuss “the destructive influence of Western media on events surrounding Ukraine” where the Russian-Italian journalist was scheduled to be one of the speakers.
Glenn Diesen, professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal, also missed out on the event in New York because his flight from Oslo was canceled “for unexplained reasons,” she said in a post on Telegram on Saturday.
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“Remarkable coincidences happening in NATO countries? Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions,” Zakharova wrote.
Both Lucidi and Diesen eventually addressed the meeting in New York via video link.
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