press. The relatives of the murdered people wrote to Vladimir Putin, saying that considering the dacha near which their sons disappeared belonged to the son-in-law of the republic's president, they were compelled to express "categorical distrust in both the law-enforcement organs and the organs of state power of Karachaevo-Cherkessia" in investigating this case. After a month of official inaction, four of the seven bodies were found at the bottom of a mine; they had been dismembered and burnt with tyres as fuel. Subsequently, a large rally protesting the local government overcame teargas and reinforced police lines to take over the presidential palace. Tlisova reported from the scene, saying "Almost all of offices in the White House [government building] have been ransacked. There is no information available yet about the whereabouts of President Batdyev. Almost every window in the building is broken. The surrounding area is filled with paper and broken furniture. Some government officials and ministers are watching the events from the streets adjacent to the White House."< Following Tlisova's coverage revealing further details of the murders, the Kabardino-Balkarian Interior Ministry withdrew her accreditation. She was accused of illegally receiving a pension and criminal proceedings were initiated, but were later dropped. Shortly after this, she was forced into a vehicle. Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (Federal Security Services, FSB) agents then took her to a nearby forest and extinguished cigarettes on the fingers of her right hand, "so that you can write better". She also reports two occasions when she feels she had been poisoned - once in October 2003 when she applied face cream, from a jar in her own home, which peeled the skin from her face and fingers, and another time when she lost consciousness after sipping some tea, and ended up with serious heart damage. On October 8, 2006, one day after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, she sent her 16-year-old son on an errand and he failed to return. Eventually she traced him to a police station in the custody of a drunken policeman who had put his name on a list of Chechen sympathizers. According to human rights advocates, people on these lists are usually savagely beaten, and may even vanish forever. In an interview with Jim Heintz of the Associated Press, Tlisova explained her desire for asylum, saying "Do you know what these lists are? These are lists of broken lives. The fact