FSB agents paid a visit to a bookstore in St. Petersburg in lateFebruary this year where Bellona "Northern Fleet" reports were on sale.After confiscating all the reports at the store, the agentswarned the scared salesmen that it was illegal to distribute thepublication in Russia due to the fact that it contains state secrets.
Belllona WEB has learned that the FSB plans to ransack theMurmansk apartment of retired Rear Admiral Nikolay Mormul, one of theadvisors to the report, who is suspected of possessing this "bannedliterature".
On another tack, two Bellona employees brought some 50 copies of thereports to St. Petersburg earlier this week. The customs officers provedindifferent to the impudent "smuggling" of the "banned literature".
Bellonas "Northern Fleet" report was officially declared "bannedliterature" in October 1996, when 1505 copies were confiscated by customsat St. Petersburg airport. The report is the first book to be prohibited inRussia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
During the year 1997, several hundred reports were brought intoRussia without difficulties. The report is available on World Wide Web inRussian, English and Norwegian.