Media baron says Putin ordered his arrest

MOSCOW - Three nights in a dingy jail cell were enough to convince media baron Vladimir Gusinsky that Russia is threatened by police state tendencies under President Vladimir Putin.

In a first public appearance after being released, Gusinsky said Tuesday he believes Putin personally ordered his detention, and said his time in jail last week led him to fear a return to Soviet-style repression of political prisoners.

Putin has denied any prior knowledge of the arrest, which has been interpreted as a crackdown on press freedoms. He said prosecutors acted independently according to Russian law.

''Prison is a special world, and I really wouldn't like the country I live in to turn into this world,'' Gusinsky said on the political talk show Glas Naroda on the NTV network, which is part of his Media-Most Group.

NTV is Russia's largest independent television network and has been critical of the Kremlin.

''I'm sure that Putin knew, and moreover, the president personally made the decision (to arrest). I am certain,'' Gusinsky said.

Gusinsky was arrested last Tuesday in a two-year-old fraud case and imprisoned through Friday in Moscow's rundown Butyrskaya prison. He was released on condition that he not leave Moscow while his case is pending.

Gusinsky has been charged with misappropriating property worth $10 million in connection with a privatization deal. He has denied wrongdoing.

Gusinsky blamed the episode on vast and arbitrary police powers. Russia has the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the world and the second-largest prison population behind the United States, with about 1 million people behind bars.

Putin has vowed to trim the influence of Russia's top businessmen, who came to be known as ''oligarchs'' under Boris Yeltsin for their close ties to the government. But analysts say Putin may be too weak or beholden to some of the oligarchs to go after them.

Leading tycoon Boris Berezovsky also warned Tuesday of pending authoritarianism under Putin. Berezovsky had close ties with Yeltsin's inner circle, but has been increasingly critical of Putin.

''The economic course is very liberal, but in the political sphere we are moving toward a rigid authoritarian system,'' Berezovsky said at an investors' conference in Moscow.

He cited Gusinsky's arrest, Putin's plan to strengthen control over Russia's provinces, and the continuing war in breakaway Chechnya.

Meanwhile, a Moscow court on Tuesday refused to consider a complaint from Gusinsky's lawyers that his arrest and detention were illegal because he qualified for an amnesty.

A recently passed bill provided amnesty from arrest or imprisonment for holders of state medals and orders. Gusinsky has a Friendship of Peoples order.

The court rejected the complaint, saying there was no foundation for it because the tycoon was no longer in police custody, his lawyer Genri Reznik said.

Reznik said he would appeal the ruling.

''The stakes are high. The arrest was absolutely illegal, that's clear to any person who knows the ABCs of criminal law,'' Reznik said.

Gusinsky, one of Russia's most prominent business leaders, owns several media outlets - including NTV television, Echo Moskvy radio station and Sevodnya newspaper.

His arrest on June 13 was met with an international outcry and accusations of a Kremlin crackdown on the press.

Later this week, the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, will debate a motion by two liberal factions to send a letter to Putin demanding that he fire the prosecutor-general, who was responsible for Gusinsky's arrest.