In line to serve as the ranking Democrat on that committee following the defeat in the November elections of Rep. Samuel Gejdenson (D-Conn), Lantos called Spain's acquiescence to a request by Russian President Vladimir Putin for Gusinsky's arrest "a violation of fundamental human rights and part of Putin's pernicious policy to stifle the free media in Russia. 

"It is important that we hold hearings on this issue," Lantos added. "This is essentially a commercial dispute between the head of Russia's largest independent media company and the Russian government. It is difficult to consider this action by the Spanish government as anything more than Spanish collusion in Russian human rights violations and suppression of the free press in Russia." 

Lantos, co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, struck a more conciliatory tone in a joint letter with U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R Ore), who chairs the European subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Writing to Angel Acebes, Spain's minister of justice, the bipartisan team wrote:

"America, which was created in the crucible of a free press, and Western nations such as Spain, which are sustained by it, can never afford to underestimate the symbolic or actual impact of information on the evolution of free and stable societies. Mr. Goussinsky, founder of the only major independent news enterprise in Russia, has ensured the delivery of accurate information to the Russian people on a variety of pressing issues--including the horrific human costs of the Chechnya campaign -- without regard to the personal and political dangers he faced. The international warrant, which precipitated Mr. Goussinsky's arrest in Spain, can only be understood as an attempt by enemies of a free press to pursue him beyond the confines of Russia's own questionable legal system--literally, to the ends of the earth." -- Donald H. Harrison