The plane, on which journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov were transported to Moscow from Beslan, was provided by a private company. Alexey Venediktov, ex-editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, spoke about this on the air of the Dozhd TV channel.
According to Venediktov, he himself organized the flight: he made a list of 12 people "who could help," and began calling them. The first interlocutor gave him the contacts of a person who organizes business jet flights. “I contacted him, and within an hour we had a plane, and then the question arose, [whether] a medical team was needed, whether to take doctors from Moscow with us,” Venediktov said.
Later, he contacted the head of the company that provided the aircraft to find out about the cost of the service, but he replied that "everything has already been settled."
As reported the day before by Novaya Gazeta, Milashina and Nemov flew to Moscow on a special flight together with the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov and Venediktov. Ambulances met them at the airport and took the victims to the Botkin hospital.
Novaya Gazeta journalist Milashina and Nemov's lawyer were attacked in Chechnya in the early morning of July 4, when they flew to Grozny for the sentencing of Zarema Musaeva, Nemov's client. Masked men kicked them and beat them with polypropylene pipes, humiliated them and forced them to eat earth. Milashina was shaved and doused with brilliant green, Nemov was stabbed in the leg.
First aid to the victims was provided by an ambulance in Grozny, but on the same day they were transported to North Ossetia for security reasons. Milashina and Nemov were examined in the Beslan hospital, and in the evening of the same day they were transferred to Moscow.