Sports writer gets death threat

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse

A Russian sports journalist who wrote about the poor performance of a local women’s football team complained to police after finding a coffin lid with his photograph on it, his newspaper said.

Yury Matitsyn, a sports correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Ryazan, discovered the casket lid by the mail boxes in his apartment building.

The newspaper’s editor Alexei Frolov said he thought some of the “protagonists” of Matitsyn’s stories had been angered by his criticism.

The coffin lid is covered in a velvety red fabric and is detailed with a traditional Orthodox cross and Matitsyn’s portrait along with the message: “Love, Remember, Mourn.”

Matitsyn complained to police that he saw the lid as a threat, Frolov said.

Novaya Gazeta listed several articles about the recent dismal performance of the local women’s football team as ones that “could serve as a cause of the threat.”